


Module 4

by bad_peppermint



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Big Bang Challenge, M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-07 13:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 53,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bad_peppermint/pseuds/bad_peppermint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As far as Tommy's concerned, his illustrious prep school's only redeeming feature is Adam. Adam who goes through the same shit Tommy does, being a werewolf; the bullying and the discrimination and the beat-downs. Adam who's sweet and nice and lets Tommy talk him into sneaking off school property at night to go see bad rock shows at seedy dives. But even Adam can't contain all the helpless rage Tommy's starting to carry around with him, so when Tommy meets local punk kid and fellow werewolf Frank, Tommy throws himself head first into a world of bad attitudes and worse ideas. And even though Adam's reluctant, Tommy could not be more psyched. He's finally found people he fits in with. It's the best time of his life, even though they all know it's just a matter of time before it all goes wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Module 4

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would not exist the way it does without the amazing stella_lost, who not only did a fabulous job as beta but also cheerleadered the Hell out of this little monster. I don't know what I did to deserve you, darling. <3
> 
> This is my second time working with cassandra_ml and I loved it just as much as the last time around. Her art will rock your socks off, so go and check it out!
> 
> And last but not least, thank you so much to everyone at werewolfbigbang who made this challenge possible. I had a fantastic time, and can't wait to do it all again next year.

  


_Clarkenwell Preparatory Academy, Maine  
September 1999_

The stack of papers, neatly stapled together in the top right-hand corner, lands on Tommy’s desk with a soft thump. It’s upside down, hence the right-sided staple and the blank top page – and will be until Mr. Larkner gives his okay because while his classmates can maybe afford to cheat, Tommy cannot – and Tommy runs his finger along the edge.

Larkner moves past him, blazer tails brushing against Tommy’s arm. Tommy hears him say, “Put that away, Lacey,” but he’s not being a dick about it. Tommy kind of likes that about him. Not that anybody in this shithole is really any better than ‘okay,’ but Larkner’s one of the better ones.

The guy in front of him turns to sneer half-heartedly at Tommy, but then Larkner says, “Eyes in front, James,” to the sound of his footsteps carrying closer again. Definitely one of the better ones.

He fiddles with his pencil a little while Larkner passes out the rest of the tests and then returns to the front of the room. “Ready…” He makes a show of readying his watch in front of his face. “Begin.”

Tommy grapples with the slick paper for a moment before he gets it flipped around. Most of the parts at the top are already filled in - _class, teacher, date_ \- so Tommy just scribbles his name in the remaining blank space and lets his eyes skim downwards.

_1) State the medical term for carrying the werewolf gene._

Tommy tries not to roll his eyes. It’s obviously Larkner’s customary give-away point for the jocks in the last row, considering the bold print at the top of the page reads, **Module 4: Lycanthrophia**. Tommy dutifully copies it down, going over one ‘h’ twice when it looks more like an ‘n,’ before turning his attention to Question 2: _Explain what members of the werewolf community mean by the term, ‘breed true.’_

Tommy sighs, wrinkles his nose, and gets to work.

  


“Tommy. Hey, Tommy!  
”  
Tommy turns at the sound of his name, grin already spreading over his face.

Adam’s a big guy, and just on the chubbier side of average, and he cuts through the crowd of uniformed students like a bulldozer. Of course, they also twist away from him, carefully avoiding any actual skin-to-skin touches, but as long as Adam continues to pretend not to care, Tommy will pretend not to notice.

“Hey, Adam,” he says when Adam comes to a halt in front of him. “What’s up?”

They’re totally in the way, standing in the middle of the hallway between classes, still rocks in a veritable ocean of students, but the one thing that’s good about their status is that nobody will actually do anything about it. At Tommy’s old school, that shit would have earned you an elbow to the back at the very least. Here, people scowl and mutter, but no one actually touches them.

“Uh, not much,” Adam says, tripping over the words. There’s a hint of a blush on his cheeks. “I saw you leaving your class, that’s all. How was the quiz?”

“Not bad, I think.” It’s not hard to smile. Larkner might not be the greatest teacher ever, and the entire module made Tommy boil with madness at the unfairness of it all, but he’s a fair grader. Tommy has to give him that.

“That’s good.” Adam ducks his head, a ridiculous gesture on a guy his size. “Spanish was stupid,” he says.

What he means is that his study partner stole the homework off him and then talked shit at him for the rest of the lesson, because that’s what Spanish is like for Adam. It’s what Spanish is like for Tommy half the time, only the guy giving him a hard time is some rando at the next desk, because the girl Tommy is supposed to be study partners with refuses to even acknowledge Tommy’s existence.

“When is Spanish ever not stupid,” Tommy says, coaxing a smile onto Adam’s face. He reaches out to brush his fingers against Adam’s elbow. “Save me a spot for lunch?”

Adam nods and then shuffles away when the bell rings, and Tommy has to sprint up an entire staircase to make it to Bio on time.

  


They end up down by the ping pong tables after last period, because Clarkenwell is the kind of place that actually has outdoor ping pong tables for their students’ entertainment. Nobody ever stoops down low enough to actually use them, not when there are actual fold-up ones at the gym and in the common rooms, but they’re perfect for sitting on side-by-side, and nobody comes to bother them here.

Adam digs out some candy bars for them to share and then makes Tommy talk him through his math problems. He naively continues to cling to the belief that just because Tommy’s a year ahead of him, he actually remembers any of that shit; or, in fact, actually got it in the first place. Tommy gets out Brave New World that they’re reading in English while Adam curses his way through his homework. It’s not quite warm out, but still pleasant enough to shuck their blazers and roll up the cuffs of their starched shirts, elbows brushing every once in a while, Adam a flare of heat against Tommy’s skin every time. It’s a stark difference to the chill seeping into his ass and thighs from sitting on the table’s cold concrete surface.

Tommy still can’t really get used to that – to the weather. He’s spent the last two years and a bit here, and he should be comfortable with it now, but he’s a California boy through and through, and he spent all of his summer roasting around back home. He doesn’t know how to deal with wet-and-cold. It’s barely September, it shouldn’t feel like the middle of January yet.

The metal bracelet on Adam’s right arm clinks when he shifts, reaching up to turn a page. It’s so innocuous, nothing more than a ring of silver with a slender L engraved on the back. Tommy stares at it for a moment while Adam reads, mouth moving silently, but it doesn’t look any different than it usually does – just as unimpressive as the rest of the time. Most of the time Tommy’s grateful for that, but sometimes he wishes the markers were a bit more in-your-face. Like, a brand to his forehead, or something. It’s not like it’d make matters any worse, and it’s just so freaking… painful sometimes that the thing that’s completely screwing over Tommy’s life has got to be so damn aesthetically pleasing to boot.

And like, Tommy knows he’s being stupid. Clarkenwell’s a shithole, but there are worse places out there. Yeah, people are dicks, and it sucks ass being all the way across the country from his mom and sister and everything he knows, but at least the school makes sure they’ve got the nation’s average when it comes to werewolf population. 8% of the student population, faculty and staff is marked L. No less than that.

No less, but certainly no more, either. There is one werewolf in the faculty – Mr. Santora, who teaches Government & Politics – and one on the staff, a groundskeeper, who was brought in a couple of days after the one in the cafeteria got fired.

Adam looks up after a little bit. He’s got a supernatural sense for attention, perhaps because he hates it so much. He smiles though, when he catches Tommy looking, and taps the eraser of his pencil against a block of text. “Wanna be my hero?” he asks, mouth tilting wryly.

The chances of Tommy actually telling him anything useful are pretty low, but Tommy’s a sucker for that smile, even though he’d never admit it. “Hit me,” he says, bending his head over Adam’s book.

Adam starts in on a rant about square footage and derivatives and using functions to calculate the ideal length and width of a soccer field, which Tommy vaguely remembers but not well enough to actually figure out what Adam’s doing wrong, and they’re so wrapped up in the problem that Tommy doesn’t hear the footsteps until it’s already too late.

“Oh look, it’s the puppy dogs.”

The voice is loud and mocking and belongs, Tommy finds when he looks up, to Jesse Monroe. He’s got his buddies with him and he’s sneering, and Tommy would laugh at how cliché it all is, except there’s four of them and there’s nobody else around and it’s not funny, it’s really, really not.

Tommy slides off the ping pong table and tries to look like he’s taller and broader than he actually is. Adam stands up too, except he’s hunching over like he’s trying to make himself _less_ threatening, and Tommy would ask _What the fuck?_ if he didn’t know him so well.

“What do you want?” he asks Jesse instead, a little wearily. His heart is pounding in his chest, yeah, but it’s also a little bit like every teen movie his sister has ever made him watch, and really. If he’s going to get his ass kicked, can’t it at least be in new and exciting ways?

Jesse smiles vaguely. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”

The problem with Jesse is that he’s not just a dumb bully. He’s attractive, in a clean-cut, All-American way, he’s charming when he wants to be, and he’s such an ingénue at cheating on tests that Tommy has to reluctantly admit that he’d probably get good grades on his own, if he only bothered to study.

And yet, such a bastard.

“Enlighten me anyway,” Tommy says. “What’d we do? Breathe near you? Share a classroom with your girl?”

“Cute,” Jesse says. He gestures at Adam. “Does he ever talk?”

Adam goes completely stiff at Tommy’s side, breathing fast and shallow, and Tommy seriously has to fight to keep from reaching over and wrapping a reassuring hand around Adam’s wrist.

“Try to pay attention to the topic at hand,” he says, mock-easily. “I know it’s hard, but you can do it.”

Jesse lifts his chin up, annoyed but at least distracted. “You’re on our turf.”

Seriously? Turf? Tommy’s pretty sure nobody actually says that outside of 1950’s greaser movies. He pushes his hands into his pockets before he remembers that he might need them soon and pulls them out again. “Since when do you give a damn about the ping pong tables?”

“Since now,” Jesse says lightly.

“Because we’re on them,” Tommy deduces.

Jesse smiles sweetly.

Whatever. Tommy can do condescending too. “Do you even have a ping pong bat?” he asks.

“What’s it to you?” Jesse asks.

Tommy grins, wide and fake. “Well, if you do, you should take it and shove it up your ass.”

Because sometimes, Tommy’s got a situation teetering on the very edge of a precipice, and he just can’t help reaching over and giving it that final little nudge.

In the end, it’s Jesse who starts it, even though Tommy technically throws the first punch. But Jesse reaches over and like, slaps his cheek, like you would with a little kid except it stings like hell, and Tommy doesn’t even hesitate before throwing himself at him. He goes down immediately, of course, two fists coming straight at him the second he dares to move. It hurts like hell, too.

The thing about the werewolf gene, the thing that makes everything so fucked up, is that it doesn’t even help. Tommy’s not any stronger, or faster, or more intimidating than he was three years ago. He’s still kind of short and lanky and girly-looking and the only thing that’s changed now that he turns into a wolf one night out of the month is that people actually have a reason to pick on him. And they do.

He gets a set of knuckles to the temple and sees stars for a second, but he still tries and feels his hands and feet connect a couple of times. He’s even vaguely aware of Adam trying to help out and sort of pushing at Jesse and getting a split lip for his trouble.

Tommy gets his hand on Jesse’s ankle while he’s distracted and yanks hard and somehow Jesse goes down. Tommy wraps his legs around Jesse’s waist and heaves himself on top of him and pulls back his fist to destroy his fucking face, and of course, _of course_ that’s when someone grabs him by the scruff of his neck and says, “What the _hell_ is going on here?”

Wright, the tennis coach, pulls Tommy to his feet but keeps firm hold of his collar while Jesse gets to his feet, thumbing the corner of his mouth. Good. Maybe Tommy broke his fucking jaw.

His bloodthirsty thoughts must show up on his forehead, or something, because Wright gives Tommy a shake.

“Wipe that smirk off your face, Ratliff,” he growls. “You’ve got nothing to smile about.”

Which, yeah. Tommy already knew _that_. Doesn’t mean he can always help himself.

  


The visitors’ chairs in the vice principal’s office are actually comfortable, is the kicker, and Mr. Schneider isn’t an ugly old creep. He’s actually a fairly attractive dude except for the way his eyes are set a little too close together, and he narrows both of them at Adam and Tommy, sitting side by side like naughty first graders. Jesse and his guys are out in the waiting room after they spent a solid twenty minutes telling their side of the story, with big handwavey motions that Tommy could see full well through the gaps in the blinds.

Technically, it’s supposed to be their turn to explain now, but Tommy only has to look at Mr. Schneider and his thoughtfully narrowed eyes to know they’ve already lost.

“Boys,” he says evenly, maybe like he’d say _Criminals_. “Mr. Monroe and his friends have explained what happened.” He blinks at them, once. “I’m afraid it doesn’t look too good for you, gentlemen.”

Adam goes a bit pale, probably like Tommy himself, but Tommy knows him well enough to know he’s not going to say anything. It’s probably the smarter choice. No one’s ever accused Tommy of being smart.

“Of course you’d take their word over ours,” he grits out.

“It has nothing to do with _that_ ,” Schneider says, waving a dismissive hand.

Tommy doesn’t bother asking what ‘that’ means, but he still rolls his eyes.

Schneider narrows his eyes at him again. “It’s four testaments against two, Mr. Ratliff,” she says. “That would be considered fair grounds to make a judgment call under any circumstances.”

“And the fact that we’re two wolves and they’re all _bullies_ has nothing to do with anything,” Tommy says evenly. He’s a bit impressed by himself. He doesn’t let anything show on his face, but he hears Adam at his side suck in a sharp breath.

“I would appreciate it if you would refrain from making such slandering statements against your peers, Mr. Ratliff,” Schneider says. He steeples his fingers together underneath his chin. “But then, sufferers of Lycanthrophia _are_ known to display frequent outbursts of unprovoked violence and aggression.”

Tommy really, _really_ wants to show him an outburst of violence and aggression, but Adam makes a little choked-off, pleading noise at his side, and Tommy grips the arms of his chair tight enough to turn his knuckles white and forces himself to sink back into the cushions.

“Yeah, okay,” he says.

Schneider nods thoughtfully. “Your parents will need to be informed of these events, of course,” he says, all mock-regretful, like he’s not totally dancing with glee on the inside.

Next to Tommy, Adam makes a noise of terror, so quiet it’s barely noticeable in the near-silent room, but Tommy’s still pretty sure he sees Mr. Schneider fight down a satisfied smile.

“I highly suggest you give them a call this afternoon,” he says. “I’m sure they’d like to speak with you.”

If possible, Adam’s gone even whiter, clinging to the armrests like they’re Obi-Wan Kenobi and he’s Princess Leia. Tommy’s clenching his hands, too, but it’s mostly because he’s so fucking pissed off he might reach over and strangle Mr. Schneider if he doesn’t. With Adam, though, it’s probably just terror, plain and simple.

Tommy leans over a bit, trying to catch Adam’s eye, to somehow make him understand that it’s okay, it’s not their fault, no matter what anybody says. But Adam’s gaze is fixed firmly on his knees, and after a minute or so, Mr. Schneider clucks his tongue impatiently.

“If there’s nothing else,” he says, opening a folder, and while Tommy would love to take that damn folder and shove it down his throat, he unclenches his hands and makes himself no “no, sir,” instead.

  


Four to six in the afternoon are study hours at Clarkenwell, doors shut and corridors empty, so Tommy tiptoes down one set of stairs and over to door 2-27.

Luckily for them, Clarkenwell had once upon a time decided to be more exclusive and cut down the student population by almost two thirds, so now it isn’t just seniors and rich kids who are able to snag a coveted single room. Tommy isn’t sure what he’d do if he had to live in this hell and share a room with someone to boot, and he thinks Adam appreciates it, too, because Adam likes to crawl far, far back into his shell whenever the opportunity presents itself. Which can be annoying, but it also means that Tommy knows where Adam is at pretty much any given moment in time, and right now he’d bet cash money he’s hiding in his room even though they don’t have locks on their doors, the same kind of stupid honesty policy shit like with their lockers, pretending like that entire thing with the vice principal didn’t even happen.

He knocks, though. He’s being sensitive and respecting boundaries and shit.

“Go away,” comes from inside.

Tommy plasters himself against the door. “It’s me,” he calls. “Come on, let me in.”

There’s a silence, and for a moment Tommy isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do now (actually go away? Threaten to break down the door? What?) and then Adam says, subdued and gloomy, “You know it’s open.”

Tommy turns the knob with more trepidation than he’d like to admit to, but Adam’s not slitting his wrists or anything – he’s just sitting on the bed, pressed against the headboard, legs tucked against his chest. His room is tidy enough to make Tommy’s, with the two shirts scattered across the floor, look like a pigsty. Nothing new there, but for once, Tommy doesn’t feel like teasing him for it. It’d be like pouring salt all over a gross, pus-oozing wound, and Tommy may be an ass half the time, but he’s not an asshole.

Adam wipes his fingers over his eyes. To anyone who doesn’t know him as well as Tommy does, he’d probably just look insanely tired, red-rimmed and bright-eyed. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Tommy replies, pulling up Adam’s desk chair next to the narrow bed and straddling it, wooden backrest digging into his forearms.

Adam reaches over to drop his handful of payphone quarters onto his desk. Some of them hit the edge instead, clattering into the thin space between wood and bed, but neither of them move to collect them.

“You talk to your mom yet?” Adam asks after a while.

“She had to go to work.” Tommy picks at the flecks of white paint chipping off the chair. “Said to call her later.”

That, and a whole lot of stuff about how disappointed she was, and that she hoped he had a really good explanation this time, and didn’t Tommy understand how lucky he was that the school had taken him at all? It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten that particular lecture, and it wasn’t like he didn’t _try_ , but it was getting harder and harder to not tell her just what exactly he thought of this school who’d so graciously offered him a full scholarship.

“Lucky you,” Adam says without inflection.

Normally Tommy’s a big fan of calling bullshit on that one, but even with that phone call still hanging over him, he feels a lot better than Adam looks right now, so he’s willing to let it stand. “Wanna head over to Joey’s to see if we can bum his Gameboy?” he asks instead.

Adam shakes his head, gaze still fixed on the fabric covering his knees. “I have to do homework,” he says.

 _Fuck homework_ , Tommy thinks. He’s been doing that a lot lately. He used to be a pretty good kid, keep his head down and his grades up, but recently he finds himself just wanting to say ‘fuck everything’ and bailing at the first sign of trouble. Maybe it’s because of hormones or some shit, or maybe it’s because of the scar on his neck, and the fact that he doesn’t know just makes him even madder.

But Adam’s looking at him now with those big, pleading eyes, practically begging Tommy to just let it drop, to sit down and stay and be a good boy, and Tommy finds himself saying, “Yeah, sure, whatever. Let’s do homework.”

The smile that breaks out over Adam’s face almost makes it worth it. “Your history stuff is over there,” he says, pointing at a stack of books on his desk that Tommy probably forgot there the last time he came over to study. “So you don’t even have to go to your room or anything.”

“Stop sweet-talking me, man, I’m already sold,” Tommy says, but fondly, and turns around in his chair to dig through the stack of books while Adam fishes for his book bag and his homework. His bookmark is in the middle of last week’s chapter, which he already just-barely-passed a quiz on, so he flips forward to _The Discovery of the Lycanthrophia Gene_ , with a reproduced sketch of a hairy, pointy-eared guy in a Victorian style coat and hat on the other page.

 _Lycanthrophia was first fully documented and defined by Englishman Lewis Gartner in 1894,_ the book tells him, although Darwin makes mention of wolf-like manbeasts in his Origin of the Species. _Gartner, setting the bar high for the many who would follow in his footsteps, first attempted to introduce this primitive culture of starved, isolated shifters into Western society, gifting them with education and civilization. Despite the charitable attempts of these scientific pioneers, however, werewolves remain among the most violent and volatile members of society one-hundred years later, oftentimes playing vital roles in brutal riots that shock_

Tommy smacks the book shut.

Adam looks up, startled by the sound, pencil poised over his notebook. “Tommy?”

Tommy pushes the book away from him. He picks up the disorderly stack of textbooks and papers on the desk and dumps them on top of it, and then sets Adam’s pencil holder on top of the pile. What he really wants to do is shred the entire thing, but it’s a loan from the school and probably costs a million dollars.  
Instead, he turns and gives Adam a smile that’s probably more frightening than reassuring. “Let’s do something stupid,” he says.

Adam gives him a wide-eyed look. He draws his legs up to his torso and wraps his arms around them. “What do you mean?” he asks.

Tommy attempts another smile, but it likely comes out more like aggressively bared teeth. “I mean, let’s do something fucked up, hare-brained, ridiculously stupid. Just for tonight. You know. Live for a bit.”

“We might not gonna live for very long,” Adam cautions him. He gnaws on his lip for a moment. “If we get caught, and the administration doesn’t kill us, then our parents definitely will.”

“My mom’s already going to kill me,” Tommy says, cheerier than he feels. His own daring sits thick and heavy in his stomach, but he’ll be damned before he chickens out now. “Might as well make it worth her while.”

“You’re crazy,” Adam tells him, very seriously.

“Crazy awesome,” Tommy says, going for light, but Adam isn’t having any of it.

“No, crazy stupid,” he says. “Dude. We have to keep our noses clean, okay? Now more than ever.”

“We have to get out of here,” Tommy corrects him. “Just for tonight, okay? This place is killing us, man.”

Adam puts his pencil down. He pushes his hair away from his forehead. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s pretend that getting out of here is even an option for a second, okay. Just – Tommy, where would we even _go_?”

He’s got a bit of a point, there, to be honest. The only town in walking distance is Ricker Hill, a good forty minutes by foot from Clarkenwell, and there’s really not a whole lot going on there. But Tommy’s thought this through. He’s maybe thought about it a little too much.

Tommy looks down at his lap. He chews on his lip for a second, and then he says, whispers really, “Desecration Row.”

“Desecration Row?” Adam breathes, like even saying the name aloud is an illicit activity. He’s not entirely wrong. “Isn’t that right in the sympathetic part of town?”

Tommy nods. It’s why he wants to go so badly, to be honest. He figures that out of all the places in Ricker Hill that might let in two underage (like, actually underage, not just too young to drink) werewolves, Desecration Row is pretty much their best bet.

“Yeah,” he says. He can’t quite make himself look Adam in the eye. “Yeah, they’ve got local bands playing every Friday and Saturday. I saw posters for it on my biology field trip.”

“A concert?” Adam asks hesitantly. He fumbles with his pencil. “You know that’s not allowed.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tommy says as casually as he can manage.

Adam sets his jaw. It’s adorable, really. “So you know that’s a terrible idea,” he says.

“Maybe,” Tommy shrugs.

“Maybe?” Adam’s voice does a neat little flip. “Tommy, we might get arrested. Suspended. Expelled! There are so many things wrong with that idea, I don’t even know where to _start_.”

“It’s not that bad,” Tommy says, even though yeah, it totally is. “Remember Mariah McCorman? She like, went down to Florida for a week without telling anybody, and she barely even got suspended.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t a wolf,” Adam says. “And now we have a McCorman wing in the library. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

Tommy shakes his head. “Aren’t you tired of that, though?” he asks. “Us not getting to do what everybody else gets to do just because we’re wolves? All over the country, teenagers are doing fucked up, retarded shit, and they’re totally allowed to get away with it. Why aren’t we?”

“I don’t want to do retarded stuff,” Adam says hesitantly.

“And we aren’t going to,” Tommy assures him immediately. “Nothing stupid, or illegal. Nothing you don’t want to do, I promise.”

“Damn right we aren’t,” Adam says with his usual lack of ferocity. He hesitates. “You really wanna do this, huh?”

“I really do.” Tommy pastes on his best pathetic face. “I can’t imagine anything I want more. And you don’t want to deprive me of that, do you?”

“No.” It’s quiet, but he’s said it, and he starts chewing his lip while Tommy tries hard to fight down a smile.

“But, Tommy, there’s like, no way this is gonna end well.”

“No one says it has to end badly.” Tommy slides his hand up Adam’s arm. “Trust me, Adam, okay? I’d never do anything to get you in trouble.”

Adam sighs, and he might not have admitted it, but Tommy knows defeat when he sees it.

“Tommy, if we get caught, we’re gonna get into so much trouble.”

Tommy smirks at him. “Then we better not get caught, huh?”

  


Tommy spends the last couple of hours before lights out trying to magic more clothes into his wardrobe through sheer force of will. Like, it’s not just a line – he legitimately _has nothing to wear_. His wardrobe holds four khaki slacks and five white shirts and two school blazers with matching ties. He can’t sneak out to Desecration Row in a white button down – he’d probably not even get in the door without getting his ass handed to him on a platter.

But at least the lack of options means he doesn’t have to take forever to decide what to wear. He has exactly one pair of jeans that he wears on flights and changes out of at the airport bathrooms, and he finds a Morrissey t-shirt crumpled up at the back of his closet and that’ll be enough. It’ll have to be enough.

Tommy’s getting out of here, tonight. He’s going to get out there and he’s going to find something better for himself than this stupid, ridiculous shithole, or he might just flip his lid and fuck some shit up, and he can’t afford to do that. Adam needs him. He doesn’t have any other friends, not really, and he’d be fucked without Tommy.

And maybe, just maybe, Tommy needs Adam to need him a little bit.

  


Sneaking out is like, stupidly easy, and Tommy can’t believe he’s never had the guts to do this before. Nobody’s paroling the halls, and even though the dorm building’s doors and windows are rigged to set off the alarm if someone opens them, apparently nobody thought to include the windows in the cellar. Tommy thinks about telling his mom when she calls, being all, _See? I’m not any safer here than in Burbank,_ but with his luck she’d tell the administration, and Tommy has a feeling he might need these windows to keep him sane this year.

He slides the window almost all the way shut once they’re outside, both of them dressed in jeans and t-shirts, the least prep school-y things they have. Adam’s got a dark blue tee with a smudge of dust across the middle. Adam is also seriously not an athletic guy, and watching him struggle out the window would be hilarious if Tommy wasn’t so damn sure they’re about to get caught.

They cut through the orchard behind the dorms, bumping into bushes and each other and jumping every time one of them steps on a twig. The fence surrounding the property is a bit more of a challenge, mostly because Adam is seriously a graceless fuck, and he spends the better part of two minutes scrabbling for a foothold before Tommy finally gets tired of it and boosts him over. It still looks kind of like a whale flopping down a waterfall, or what Tommy supposes that would look like, ‘cause it’s not like Tommy has first-hand experience to compare it to.

Tommy has an easier time just by virtue of the fact that he’s lighter, not because he’s any fitter, and they’re both breathing heavily and kind of sweaty and gross by the time they’re free, but then they’re _free_ and the entire thing just kind of falls by the wayside when Tommy feels a jolt of butterflies in his stomach. They’re _out_ , holy shit.

It still feels weird to talk, though, even when they get into town, so they walk the streets in silence, Adam clenching and unclenching his hands at Tommy’s side. There’s nobody around, shops closed, streets deserted. Tommy has a bit of a hard time believing it’s a Friday night.

It’s not until they get to the dirty part of town, the sympathetic part of town, that a little bit of life manages to creep through the cracks. There are people sprawled out on porches, cigarette ends bright in the darkness, lights and noises spilling from a propped-open garage door. There’s still not much, but it’s getting to be more and more, the closer they get, until they can find their way to Desecration Row by nothing more than the beat of drums thumping in the cool night air.

Thank God for the noise, actually, because Tommy isn’t sure he would have found the place otherwise. Desecration Row is in an old storehouse in an alley behind an off-license liquor store, and they probably would have strolled straight by it if it weren’t for the black-hoodied couples clustered around a streetlamp. There are a few more of them in the alley itself, but no one waiting by the entrance, which probably means the party is already well underway. It also means no bouncers, which is good. Tommy doesn’t know what he’d do if he’d come all this way only to be turned away at the door.

Adam stops him at the door with a hand on his wrist. “This is a really, really bad idea.”

Tommy bares his teeth again. “That’s kind of the point.”

“Tommy,” Adam mutters, and Tommy can see in his eyes that he’s about to chicken out, so he pushes open the heavy door and heads inside. It’s mean, maybe, but if there’s one thing Adam’s more afraid of than getting in trouble, it’s getting in trouble _alone_.

  


The club isn’t full or anything. It’s not much of a surprise – there’s not enough people in this shitty-ass town, decent people, the kind who’d go to a show in a sympathetic club in a sympathetic part of town. It doesn’t matter though. The couple dozen people who _are_ there are crowded around the stage like someone’s handing out free bottles of booze, and once he and Adam have pushed their way into the middle of it, there might as well be thousands of people gathered around them, all yelling and jumping and having a fucking good time.

It takes about five seconds for someone to elbow Tommy in the face, and someone else to step on Tommy’s shoes with fucking steel-capped boots, and Adam grapples for Tommy’s hand when the crush of teenage bodies drags them apart. It’s hot and sticky and the girl next to Tommy can’t sing for shit but she’s yelling her fucking heart out, anyway.

It’s fucking awesome.

Tommy keeps a tight hold on Adam’s hand, but he can’t keep from bouncing around like an insane motherfucker, screaming and throwing up the devil’s horns when the singer on stage does it.

The set ends a song and a half later and a whole bunch of hardcore metal kids disappear off the floor. Tommy would be disappointed, but there’s also a surge of people crowding forward, pushing themselves off the walls of the place and sliding off of barstools to head for the stage. They’re more punk looking, eyeliner thick on their faces, messages written across their skin in uneven black sharpie. There are techies on stage, carrying drums and guitars off and onto the stage, but the crowd is already gearing up for something big, Tommy can tell.

Somebody pushes into him from the side and he ends up in front of Adam who grabs his waist to keep him from getting swept away. Or possibly from getting swept away himself, who knows. Tommy throws him a grin over his shoulder and promptly misses the entrance of the band, not looking back until they’re all already at their instruments and everybody around them is yelling their approval.

The singer himself slinks on last, a skinny guy with a mess of black hair on his head, but his grin is infectious when he finally takes hold of the microphone.

“Hey, everyone,” he says, giving a little wave. “Thanks for coming tonight.” He grins into the bright lights trained on his face. “We’re My Chemical Romance, and we’re here to save your life.”

With that little weirdo announcement, he nods to the drummer to start them up. The beat’s solid, and the little guy with the guitar is seriously into what he’s doing, but they’re barely a verse into what might be a pretty solid song when the singer peers down into the audience at his feet. “No, man, don’t do that,” he says suddenly, across the riffs of his band members, and the chords peter out.

“No, seriously,” he says to somebody in the first couple of rows, bending down with his hands on his knees. “Like, man, look behind you. She almost got your elbow in the face, and that’s not cool, okay? Like, she can barely see behind you, what are you doing in front of her, anyway?”

Somebody says something, inaudible across the distance, and the singer nods seriously.

“I’m sure she’ll forgive you if you wanna be a gentleman,” he says. “Yeah, like that. Come on, guys, let her through.” He grins, quick and easy, and bumps fists with somebody in the crowd. “That’s what I like to see,” he says. “I expect you all to be gentlemen, okay,” he adds to the audience at large, looking like he’s gearing up for an entire speech, but the guy with all the hair leans towards his mike and says, “Gerard,” and Gerard looks over at him, expression turning sheepish.

“Right,” he says. “Right. He turns to the guy at the drums. “Count us back in?”

After a fourcount, they pick up where they left off, and it isn’t long before the crowd is bobbing along again. The singer’s voice isn’t as technically refined as Adam’s, not as polished, but he has a sort of magnetism to him that’s hard to resist. He struts across the stage and yanks his fellow band members’ hair and runs his hands over their chests, he snarls and growls and practically goes down on his mike, and somehow he still finds the time to get the entire place hyped up and jumping.

Tommy is so completely lost in the performance that he startles when Adam leans in close, a line of fire along Tommy’s spine.

“When I’m famous, that’s the shit I’m gonna do,” Adam says in his ear.

“They’re gonna love it,” Tommy tells him, and he allows himself to shift into the hand that settles on his waist.

He starts bouncing around again the second the next song starts, but he still feels Adam’s hand through his shirt long after it’s gone, even when the band stops playing and there’s another shuffle of bodies, the punk ones heading for the bar or the door while other, more harcore-metal looking ones push forward again. It’s a rougher crowd, overall, and Adam’s starting to look cagey and Tommy could use something to drink, too, throat parched from yelling along to whatever chorus he could pick up in the space of a song, so he prods Adam towards the bar.

Adam goes, looking vaguely grateful, and they manage to snag a stool and hang onto it until one next to it opens up. There’s two bartenders but they’re both alternately swamped or distracted by jailbait in low-cut tops, so Tommy takes a second to catch his breath, looking over every once in a while to make sure Adam’s doing the same. Now that the terror of sneaking out and the surprise of actually being at a damn cool concert’s worn off a bit, the thrill’s taking over. Tommy’s done being a good boy. Come on, world, do your worst. Fucking bring it.

The guy next to him, the one who keeps elbowing Tommy in the back with his overly muscled arm while he’s practically in the lap of the girl next to him, has an opened pack of cigarettes in front of him, and it’s fucking _easy_ to reach over and take it like it’s really his. It’s about half full, still, with a lighter tucked neatly between the stalks of paper. Fucking goldmine.

Adam sniffs and turns his head away, which is pretty par for the course. They’ve been here before – Adam’s told Tommy time and time again that he’d totally smoke weed if they ever got their hands on any, but he refuses to even try cigarettes. He cycles through reasons like Tommy cycles through underwear, anything from not wanting to fuck up his voice and not having the money to not wanting to age prematurely. Vain fucker.

The only real reason Tommy can think of to not smoke would be because it soaks into his clothes, making them reek in ways that the school cleaners couldn’t ignore even if they wanted to. But the only thing on his list of things to do tonight is piss off the fucking school as hard as he can, so he waggles the pack of smokes at Adam and slides off his stool.

Adam purses his lips primly but keeps his mouth thankfully shut.

There’s not a whole lot going on outside, which Tommy’s weirdly grateful for, after the crush of bodies on the floor and the beat of the drums he could feel all the way down his spine. He throws his arms into the air, trying to stretch out his back a bit, feeling the cool night air drift against his bare stomach. This – this is exactly what he wanted. Even if they do get caught sneaking back in, or somebody checks their room for whatever reason, it’ll so be worth it.

“Enjoying yourself?” The question’s friendly enough, but the tone isn’t, and Tommy feels his hackles rise before he even turns to the speaker, a short guy with fucking _orange_ hair and a sleeve tattoo up one arm.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. The guy’s short, and not a whole lot older than Tommy, but he looks tough. He looks like he could kick Tommy’s ass out of sheer determination.

“Let me guess.” The guy drops his cigarette and grinds it into flakey pieces with the heel of his Nikes. “You’re at that posh school up on the hill, and you managed to sneak out for the night, so now you’re slumming it and feeling like a badass.”

“You’re from the band,” Tommy says, because he’s an idiot.

The guy smirks a little. “Yep, that’s me.” He pulls open the stage door, noise and light spilling into the alley. “Thanks for coming. Try not to help any old ladies across the street on the way home.”

He’s gone before Tommy can stutter out a reply about all old ladies being in bed at this point, fire door clanging shut behind him.

Lighting up isn’t particularly satisfying after that, and he ends up dropping the smoke and grinding it under his heel before he’s even halfway done with it. Shit. Some motherfucker’s always gotta rain on his parade.

  


Tommy’s vaguely impressed when he gets back inside and Adam is still there, sulk-free and unmolested. He almost looks like he’s enjoying himself, tapping his foot against the bottom rung of his barstool to the sound of whatever band is playing now, but he doesn’t protest when Tommy tugs on his elbow and says, “Come on, home.”

Contrary to one of the prime rules of the universe, the way back from the club doesn’t feel any faster than the way there. Instead it just seems to drag on forever, dark streets stretching on in front and behind them, and when they finally get to the fence surrounding Clarkenwell property, Tommy barely has enough strength to drag himself over it. It’s weird – he was totally buzzing with energy back at the concert, but now it feels like it’s all just leaked out of him. Like a soda can with a hole at the bottom, or something. He doesn’t even quite remember to be worried about someone catching them, even though he should, even though they’re being too loud and they’re already on the administration’s shit list and nobody would believe them if they said they’d just gone to the bathroom, or something. But the corridors are moonlit and deserted. Tommy gives Adam’s hand a quick squeeze before he heads up the stairs to his own room, gets into bed and pulls the covers over his head and doesn’t move again until morning.

  


It’s weird, after that. It’s like there’s something buzzing underneath Tommy’s skin, something big, something huge. It’s nothing new. It’s like it was always there, just below the surface, but now that Tommy’s given in, just the once, it’s feeding off his one night of rebellion and growing, growing until it can no longer be contained.

It’s like something big is lingering just around the corner, and going to his classes with that knowledge whirling around at the back of his mind is kind of bizarre. Not in a bad way, necessarily. In some ways, school and all its bullshit is easier to bear, now that Tommy knows there’s something better out there, just waiting for him to be done with it all. But it’s also harder, somehow, because there’s something better out there, just waiting for him, and yet he’s stuck at school dealing with the same old bullshit.

It doesn’t help that it’s a full moon two days later, when he’s still buzzing with the excitement of it all. There’s nothing quite as good at killing a mood as having your name called over the PA for the entire school to hear so you can trudge down to the cellar and let yourself be locked up until sun-up.

Adam’s already there when Tommy comes down the stairs, waiting at the second steel-enforced door on the right-hand side. Tommy goes to stand by the first, the one he’s been using since he got lost his very first moon at Clarkenwell and almost didn’t make it inside in time.

He’s barely gotten situated by the time the administration guys show up. They always let the heavy door at the top of the stairs bang shut, but it still makes a couple of people flinch, Tommy included. There’s two of them, one for each side of the corridor. Nate Novarro’s standing in front of the door across from Tommy, and their eyes meet for a split second, Nate’s dark and unreadable and so, so old, before they both have to shuffle aside to let the administration guys get at their doors with their five thousand keys.

Tommy’s guy moves carefully around him as he undoes the locks and pulls open the door for Tommy to edge inside. He’s blocking Tommy’s view, so he can’t even sneak one last look at Adam before he’s left alone. Tommy doesn’t really need to look around the room, but he still does it, takes in the bare walls and concrete floor and the single window high up in the wall, high enough that it’d take a boatload of upper-body-strength that Tommy just doesn’t have to pull yourself up to it, and then there’s still the fact that it doesn’t really open beyond a couple of inches.

Tommy stands in the middle of the room, motionless, listening to the sounds of people moving outside. They’re always impressively silent. It always takes forever, too – admin guy has to unlock every single one of the eight doors on Tommy’s side, and once he’s at the end he has to supervise all of them stripping out of their clothes and leaving them outside of the door. Wouldn’t want that precious school uniform to be damaged, after all.

Tommy bites his knuckle to keep from laughing, or maybe scowling, he’s not entirely sure. He sees these guys, his guy, every month, and he doesn’t even know their names. They probably don’t know his, either. They just show up, in suits but with blazers missing like they’re about to do unexpected but deeply unpleasant labor, unlocking their doors and then locking them again behind them. It’s probably a shitty job, but Tommy can’t say he has a whole lot of sympathy.

It seems like an eternity before admin guy shows up again. He kind of rolls his eyes when he sees Tommy standing there, still dressed, but he doesn’t tell him off for it. He never does. He doesn’t say anything at all, in fact, just motions impatiently for Tommy to get on with it, entirely unimpressed by the dark look Tommy gives him when he starts to fumble with his tie.

The guy watches him, face twisted in displeased boredom, while Tommy strips out of his blazer and shirt, while he unties his shoes and shoves his socks into them. He folds everything into a tidy heap and then, when the guy still hasn’t looked away, he takes a deep breath and shoves his pants and underwear down in one go. The guy watches while Tommy gathers up all his shit and drops it next to the door, _outside_ the door, trying to move as little as possible, and then motions for Tommy to step back into the room and swings the door shut.

It locks with a heavy, deafening thud of metal against metal. Tommy’s already itching to get out of his skin. He just – there’s gotta be a way out of this. Around this. It can’t be _right_.

Still, though. Right or not, he’s still stuck here, and it fucking _sucks_.

  


He wakes up contorted on the concrete floor, neck sore and fingers scratched raw and nothing but snatches of memories; of being trapped, of clawing at the walls in terror, of curling into a shaking ball and howling his desperation into the quiet air.

Not even showering helps to wash away the chaos raging in his head, the last remnants of fear, and it takes everything’s he’s got to not just curl up into a ball on the tiled floor and not move until this fucking day is over.

It really doesn’t help that there’s a pop quiz waiting on his desk when he slips into his Chemistry classroom with thirty seconds to spare before the bell. He gets stuck halfway through calculating the half-life of sulfur-35, still half-caught in the nightmare of last night, and spends several precious minutes thinking of Adam, bleary-eyed and drooping in his American Lit class, probably trying so very hard to look like he’s taking in a single word being said. And then Mr. Butkovich raises his voice to say, “Feel free to turn in that test if you’re done, Mr. Ratliff,” and Tommy looks up long enough to catch a sympathetic look from the wrecked-looking Michael Schellener in the first row before he forces his head down and his eyes to focus on the x’s and the n’s.

The day drags on forever, his sleep-deprived brain making slow-going classes run longer still, and it seems like years before the last bell finally rings. He didn’t even see Adam at lunch, although Ryan Ross muttered something about the juniors saying something about Adam being held back after English because he was nodding off in class. Tommy’s got no clue if that’s true or not, but it’s something he wouldn’t put past this school, so he barely even pauses to stuff his books into his locker before he goes to find Adam in the study room at the very back of the library.

Adam’s already there, waiting for him with a book propped against the edge of the table. They haven’t gone back to the ping pong tables since that whole thing with Jesse went down. Tommy kind of wants to, just to spite him, but even he knows that there’s such a thing as tempting fate, so when Adam suggested the library as an alternate hang-out spot, he just smiled and tagged along.

“How are you feeling?” Adam asks hesitantly, climbing to his feet and folding his hands in front of his body.

Tommy dredges up a smile. “Probably as well as you are,” he says. “I’ll be better if we can just get the hell out of here.”

“No,” Adam says, as decidedly as Tommy’s ever heard him say anything. “No, Tommy. It was a dumb idea last time, and it’s still a dumb idea, and we’re not doing it.”

“Adam, come on,” Tommy says, but Adam just shakes his head.

“Forget it.”

“Can’t you just…” Tommy’s almost whispering now, but he can’t stop. God only knows what’s wrong with him, but he feels kind of small and dirty and really just wants to curl up into a ball and die. “For me?”

“Fuck no,” Adam says, and Tommy wraps his arms around his stomach and scuffs his shoes against the carpet, but Adam’s not done yet.

“No, no, and fucking no, Tommy. Of all the dumb shit you’ve ever come up with, this is without a doubt the worst, and I don’t know why I let you talk me into it last time but it was a mistake and it’s not going to happen again, so stop fucking asking me!”

“Please,” Tommy bursts out. He doesn’t look up from the floor. “Just… please.”

Adam doesn’t say anything for a while. Tommy can feel his eyes on him though, so he doesn’t look up until Adam draws in a sharp breath. He throws his hands in the air, all exasperated movement. “Alright. Alright, fine. It’s a terrible idea, but fine.”

“Thank you,” Tommy says quietly. Adam won’t look at him anymore, but that’s fine. This is worth it.

  


The music, when they finally make it to Desecration Row, tense and still riding high on adrenaline, is even louder than the last time. They’re here later than the last time, too, though, so maybe that has something to do with it. There’s even a bouncer this time, a gigantic bald dude in camouflage shorts, but he doesn’t do more than nod at them when they squeeze past.

There’s a bit more of a crowd this time, too, pressed up against the stage, hands extended towards the singer. Tommy’s too far away to get a good look at his face, but that voice sounds pretty damn familiar anyway.

He reaches blindly back for Adam’s hand, dragging him with him when he pushes closer, and he can tell from the way Adam’s fingers tighten around his when Adam comes to the same realization.

“Are those the same guys from last time?” he asks, right in Tommy’s ear.

“I dunno,” Tommy says, even though he’s pretty sure they are. He definitely remembers that orange hair.

“Wow,” Adam says, and Tommy turns back to him and shrugs.

“I don’t really know how many bands Ricker Hill has to offer,” he says.

“Enough to warrant a venue,” Adam points out, and yeah, okay, point.

“You wanna get in there?” Adam asks, tilting his head at the jumping crowd of punks.

“Are you telling me you want to?” Tommy asks, eyebrows climbing high.

“No.” Adam grins a little bit. “But you kinda look like you need to work off some steam, so.”

Put like that, Tommy doesn’t need telling twice, and he doesn’t waste any time dragging Adam into the fray. They lose each other for a bit but bump – literally – into each other in the pit, and Adam wraps his arms around Tommy and pulls him back a bit. Which sucks, because uncoordinated jumping and the occasional burst of pain was kind of the most alive Tommy’s felt ever since the shift, but he’s not willing to sacrifice Adam’s arms around him to get that back, so he leans back against Adam’s solid chest and drags his attention back to the stage.

The guitarist with the crazy hair’s doing a solo at the moment, so the singer’s wandered off, making moon eyes at the redhead. And then he just kind of… He slides his finger into the tiny dude’s hair and just fucking _kisses_ him, right there, like it’s no big deal, and Adam’s breathing is hot and heavy and startled in Tommy’s ear and Tommy stops bouncing around for a second because holy shit, he didn’t see that coming.

“Wow,” Adam says, and Tommy would say the same, he’s even moving his lips, but there’s no sound coming out. Just _wow_.

  


Tommy’s sweat-soaked and still a bit speechless when the set is done. He figures he even kind of deserves it when Adam takes a good look at him and starts laughing, so he’s not even scowling too hard when Adam drags him over to the bar and orders both of them a coke. Tommy’s not even through half of his before a couple of people starts cheering again; looking over, the singer’s just emerged from backstage, slapping shoulders and giving out hugs to the people he recognizes.

He ends up chatting with a few girls with crazy hair for almost twenty minutes, not that Tommy’s paying attention or anything, before the rest of the band emerges.

That guy – the guy from the band, the one who told Tommy he was a fucking boy scout – nods in their direction, but he heads straight for the bartender instead of coming over. Tommy is vaguely annoyed, and a bit relieved, at the lack of attention. It doesn’t last long, though, because then Gerard – Gerard the _singer_ \- comes over and nudges the guy next to Adam in the back and says something along the lines of, “Worm wants you backstage,” and then he slides onto the barstool when the guy Worm supposedly wants backstage abandons it.

He waves a hand hopelessly in the bartender’s direction, who doesn’t notice because he’s fixing up a drink for the guitarist, and Gerard slumps for a moment before he notices Tommy looking. A moment later, a smile appears on his face. “Hey there,” he says, holding out his hand at a really funky angle. “I’m Gerard. Way. I sing for My Chem.”

“Yeah, we know, dude,” Tommy says, but he still reaches over Adam to squeeze Gerard’s hand. “I’m Tommy. That’s Adam.”

Adam gives a little wave before he wraps his arms back around his midriff. He’s a social caterpillar, seriously.

Gerard smiles, though. “You guys enjoy the show?” he asks. “Today was a good one. Everybody was all into it, it was great.”

Down the bar, when Tommy looks, Frank’s throwing back his drink. He says something to the barkeep, slides a bill across the bar and grins, quick and easy. Then he looks over and makes an _I’m watching you_ gesture at Tommy, creepily intent.

Gerard laughs. “You caught Frank’s attention,” he says to Tommy. “Don’t ask me how. Fucker’s got a memory the size of a gnat.”

“We talked for a bit after the last gig,” Tommy says. He flinches when he catches Adam’s – totally deserved, okay, fine – elbow in the ribs. “For, like, a second. I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

“Frank doesn’t hate anybody,” Gerard says, waving off his words like they’re ridiculous. “He’s just an angry dude.”

“Yeah, and he hates me.”

Gerard just shakes his head, smirking a little bit. It’s kind of annoying. “You’ll see,” he says mysteriously.

Tommy manages not to roll his eyes.

Gerard grins brightly in return and turns to draw Adam into a discussion about the current band, carefully coaxing him into answering in more than single syllables and blushes. Tommy stares at the bottles of liquor lined up above the bar and lets the adrenaline fade into exhaustion. He zones out trying to decipher the small print on one of the labels and almost tips off his stool in shock when Frank’s suddenly at his elbow, gesturing something at the bartender before he leans into Gerard and presses a quick kiss to his temple.

“Hey, man,” he says to Tommy, all casual like, and Gerard grins at Tommy over Adam’s shoulder all _See? See? What did I tell you?_ Fucking smart-ass.

“Hey,” Tommy says to Frank.

The other guy takes a beer from the barkeeper and gulps down a long swallow before he asks, around the neck of the bottle, “Make any old ladies happy recently?”

“Only your mom,” Tommy says, ignoring Gerard and Adam’s puzzled expressions. Instead, he makes hopeful eyes at the bartender who snickers and shakes his head. Ass.

Frank, though – Frank grins and smacks Tommy on the shoulder before handing over his bottle. “I like you, man,” he says. He turns to Gerard. “Gee, Ray says to tell you we already packed up, and thanks for the help.”

Gerard smiles innocently, and Frank half grins, half rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, dude. I’m gonna go, Jamia’s waiting for me backstage.”

Gerard makes a tiny noise of amusement, and Frank slides his hand across his chest and toddles off, all five-foot-something swagger, fist-bumping somebody in the diminishing crowd before he disappears.

“Jamia?” Adam asks Gerard.

Gerard twists his mouth ruefully, like it’s a question he’s used to getting but not one he really likes answering. “His girlfriend,” he says.

“But you,” Tommy says, like a dumbass, gesturing up at the stage.

Gerard smiles a little bit. “Nah, he just likes to fuck with people. Making out with another guy at a punk-slash-metal concert is right up his alley.”

“People here don’t like that?” Adam asks hesitantly.

“They don’t really care much one way or the other, as long as the rhythm’s right.” Gerard shrugs. “But there’s always some asshole who just can’t keep his mouth shut, and Frank sure has a good time shutting it for him.”

“That’s… good.” Adam picks at his fingers, like, really fucking obviously, and if Gerard hadn’t ferreted on to the fact that Adam’s worried about himself liking dick, he definitely knows now.

But Gerard just grins and pats Adam’s arm. “People here are cool, Adam,” he says. Then he leans forward and adds, surprisingly earnestly, “And if anybody gives you any trouble, you can tell us, okay? We want you to feel safe here.”

It sounds a bit too much like an after-school special to be honest, and Tommy can feel his eyebrows rising up of their own accord, but Gerard’s smile is nothing but innocent. “And you, too, Tommy, of course.”

“Thanks, man,” Tommy says, but he doesn’t roll his eyes. It seems unnecessarily mean, especially when Gerard apparently legitimately wants to make them feel better. Instead, he drinks his (Frank’s) beer for a bit. He even offers the bottle to Adam who takes a sip and makes a face before handing it back. Gerard happily drinks a stoplight of shots the barkeeper pours for him and washes them down with a BudLight. Tommy kind of wants to down his beer, too, but it’s the only one he’s gonna get his hands on tonight, looks like, and he doesn’t want to choke on it and like, actually _prove_ that he has no idea what he’s doing.

So even though he jumps, he’s also kind of relieved when Frank calls “Yo, Tommy,” from across the room. He’s holding up a pack of Viceroy’s, the cheap kind. “We’re going for a smoke, come on.”

Tommy tries not to show his panic when he pushes his beer at Adam, slides off the stool and makes his way across the sticky floor, soles catching with every step, and towards where Frank’s got the fire door pushed open with one hand. From close up, Frank’s lips are kiss-swollen and red, and he’s got a red spot on his neck that’ll no doubt turn into a hickey by tomorrow, and even if all of that wasn’t enough to tell Tommy what he’s been up to, the smug smile on his face would give it away.

“Jamia doesn’t smoke?” he asks when they’re outside, Frank spinning away to fiddle with his cigarettes. It probably comes out more awkward than casual, but Frank only grins.

“Nope. She’s a smart cookie, that one. Refuses to join me in my quest for cancer.”

“That’s… pretty smart, yeah,” Tommy says, and feels like an idiot.

Franks flicks on his lighter and looks up at him, smile sharp in the orange light. “Yeah, well, we’re guys. We’re supposed to do dumb shit and put our life in danger.”

“Modern-day chest-thumping,” Tommy offers, and Frank laughs.

“What’s your name, Gorilla-Boy?” he asks, and Tommy mutters “Tommy,” and he nods.

“I’m Frank,” he says.

“Yeah.” Tommy gestures over his shoulder, even though that’s the wrong way. “Gerard told us.”

“He’s a blabbermouth,” Frank says easily. He comes and pushes at Tommy’s shoulder before he offers him his pack. Tommy takes one on autopilot, stuck on the fact that Frank only comes up to his nose. It’s freaky but nice. It’s actually kind of cool to not be the shortest guy around.

They smoke in silence for a while, before Frank stops and gives Tommy a considering look. “So, like,” he says, in a tone that immediately has Tommy on high alert. “Tell me something.”

“What do you want to know?”

It comes out kind of flat, and Frank raises an eyebrow before he says, “So, like, Clarkenwell’s a pretty fucking posh place, yeah?”

Tommy doesn’t even dignify that with a reply, just nods.

“So, like.” Frank spreads his hand, cigarette gleaming between two fingers. “What are you doing down here?”

Tommy blinks. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, dude, that you’ve got everything you fucking want up there, and you’re risking it all for a bunch of fucked up kids playing a shitty club. And like, this place rocks, don’t get me wrong, but just – why?”

Tommy laughs. He can’t help it. He tries to keep it in, keep it down, but it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s heard in days, weeks, possibly his entire life. He tries to take a drag from his cigarette when he can’t make himself stop chortling and ends up choking on the smoke, and while he hacks, Frank’s expression goes from annoyed to concerned.

“Dude, chill,” he says. “Seriously. It wasn’t even that funny.”

“You have no idea,” Tommy chokes out, but he takes the half-full, luke-warm bottle of water Frank pulls from the back pocket of his jeans and uncaps for him. A long, slow mouthful helps a bit, and he takes another one before he hands the bottle back.

He tries to straighten a little, compose himself, and then he says, “Frank, if there was one place that I would nominate for fucking hell on Earth, it would be that school, okay?”

“Seriously?” Frank asks, freezing with his cigarette halfway to his mouth.

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “What, you really think I’d be here if I was all about trumpeting the company line?”

“Guess not,” Frank shrugs. “Most everybody who goes there seems to love it, though,” he says, and gives Tommy the eye again.

And fuck it. If Frank’s gonna shun him for having the gene, Tommy would rather find out now than think Frank’s a chill guy for the longest time and _then_ have to deal with the fallout.

“We’re not exactly everybody’s favorite person,” he says, challenging. _Ask me_ , he dares him.

When Frank does arch his eyebrows, Tommy lifts his hand into the air and jiggles the bracelet around his wrist.

“Well fuck that,” Frank says, pushing up his sleeve to show the rubber band around his. “If I cared what people think of me, I would have put a bullet in my head a long time ago.”

“I care,” Tommy says baldly. “I’d kind of like it if _they_ didn’t put a bullet in _my_ head, you see.”

“You might be onto something,” Frank says, mock seriously, punctuating the words with a stab of his cigarette in Tommy’s direction. He loses it mid-motion and stares at the butt on the ground dejectedly for a moment before he lights another one. “So what brings you to New England, Tommy?”

“Um.” Tommy’s a bit thrown by the small talk shit, but Frank motions for him to go on, all curious eyes.

“Carsberg, actually,” Tommy says after a minute. “You know, that thing in L.A.?”

“That wolf that got fucked up by those ghetto kids, or whatever?”

“Lynched. Yeah.” Tommy’s not the type to get nightmares, but even he had trouble sleeping after that news footage – the kid’s nineteen-year-old face, fucked up and distorted into a Quasimodo grimace, boot print on his pale neck. Paul Carsberg. “Shit went on for a while after that. Like, people getting beaten up, people smashing shop windows, burning cars. My mom wanted to get me out of there.”

“You got bit, then?” Frank asks, dark eyes flickering up to Tommy’s neck.

Tommy nods. “Yeah. We have like, zero money, but Clarkenwell has some scholarship program for underprivileged werewolves, or some shit, so.” He shrugs with one shoulder. “Adam’s kind of the same, with the riots and shit, except he’s bred true, right, so he did his freshman year here, too.” He’s itching to rub at the back of his neck, but he stuffs his hand into his pocket instead. “We started at the same time,” he says.

He watches Frank take a couple slow drags from his cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the cold air. Finally he tilts his hand away and says, “So, you’re like, recently crossed over.”

“January 12th,” Tommy says. He doesn’t even hesitate. “Three years ago. Shit.”

“Shit,” Frank echoes. “Man, I can’t imagine what it’s like not to turn.”

“I wish I didn’t know what it’s like,” Tommy says. He didn’t mean to, and he regrets it the minute Frank turns grim eyes on him, but it’s the truth. His life officially went to shit the night he snuck out to get fucked up on the playground with the two guys from next door. Werewolf snack. He’s spent every day since then wishing he’d just been a fucking good boy and stayed at home. His mother’s freak-out had been nothing compared to the way Tommy had beaten himself up about his retarded decisions.

Frank, though, looks at Tommy like Tommy’s a total weirdo for saying something like that.

“What?” Tommy finally asks, when the silence draws on, long and uncomfortable.

But Frank just shakes his head. “You should come by our place sometime,” he says instead. “43 Millner Street. We usually just chill there when we’re not playing a gig.”

“43 Millner,” Tommy repeats. He’s gaping a bit, but he thinks that’s kind of justified, given the circumstances. “Just, like, whenever?”

“Whenever,” Frank agrees easily. “But not before noon. Like, normal-people time, okay?”

“Okay,” Tommy agrees, probably sounding as dazed as he feels.

Frank throws a quick grin his way before he ducks backstage, and Tommy goes to find Adam and maybe freak out a little bit, because holy fuck.

  


They almost get caught sneaking back in. They spend forever breathing each other’s air in the second stairwell because there’s somebody wandering the corridors, given away by the way their steps echo on the linoleum. When they finally make a break for it, somebody calls “Hey!” and Adam disappears into his room and probably dives straight under the covers, and Tommy ducks into the bathroom and waits in a shower stall for what feels like hours and even hides his jeans and shoes underneath the sink so he can walk back to his room one floor up in just his t-shirt and boxers and pretend he was just going for a piss if anybody catches him wandering the halls at night.

Nobody catches him.

And he’s happy, like, seriously happy about that, but at the same time, there’s’ something startlingly like disappointment curled in his chest. Like, things are different now, right? Everything’s so different now. Tommy feels like somebody else, somebody new, and he wants to shout it from the rooftops but he can’t. He’s a bit like Alice, maybe. He’s gone down the rabbit hole, and he can’t even tell anyone about it.

Instead, he gets to drag his ass to his usual classes and talk about the same stuff they talked about the last time, with the same people, and he gets about two periods in before he gives up on pretending to be the same Tommy and just spends most of Spanish dozing in and out of consciousness. He hates his classmates and the teacher most of the time, and sometimes he even hates his hetero-normative, white-bread textbook. But he really hates the language itself, and he makes it a point to always be the first out the door.

Usually he meets Adam by his locker, but he’s not there today, and Tommy’s fiddling with his books and stalling for time when he hears the laughter.

He lifts his head, but completely in the wrong direction, considering the only person he sees is a girl at a locker two down from Adam’s, marked with a clear L in the top corner, and she looks like could not possibly be further from laughing right now.

Tommy doesn’t know her all that well, but Clarkenwell is small enough that Tommy remembers most names and faces; hers is Daisy, she’s a sophomore, and she’s got just enough weight on her bones to give her awesome curves and an amazing rack. She has History with Adam and always blushes when a teacher calls on her, no matter if she’s wrong or right.

It’s too bad Tommy isn’t particularly interested in girls, because Daisy’s cute. Like, really cute, with a button nose and bright eyes and long blonde hair that spills over her shoulders and down her back. Being interested in her would make Tommy’s life a whole lot easier.

As it stands, Tommy’s more interested in tall and ginger-haired and dorky. It’s ridiculous, but it is what it is.

“Hey, Tommy,” she says, catching his eyes. The paper in her hands vibrates for a moment before she closes her fingers tightly around it.

“Hey.” Tommy takes a careful step towards her, and it’s not until someone giggles in the vicinity again and Daisy flinches that Tommy realizes what’s going on. There are a handful of pretty girls – probably not cheerleaders, but stupidly attractive anyway – crowded against one of the lockers, making faces at themselves in the mirror stuck to the inside and occasionally at Daisy down the hall.

“’L’ for ‘ugly,” one of them snickers, far too loudly not to be intended to hurt. They all break into obnoxiously loud laughter at that, and then they head off for lunch, probably to eat salads with low-fat dressing and make cow eyes at the football players.

Daisy looks down at her feet, arms closing tightly around her chest, and Tommy crosses over to her and reaches out to put a hand on her arm before he even thinks about it. He never thinks about it, what it must be like for her – she and Maria are the only female wolves at the school (again, they match the statistics perfectly – there are 2 female wolves to 15 males) and Tommy thinks that maybe it’s worse for her. He doesn’t think they get smacked around as much, but. Girls are cruel.

Daisy raises her head slowly, and fuck. Tommy doesn’t have to be a genius to understand that sheen of silver in her eyes.

“They’re bitches, Daisy,” he says. He even manages a smile. “Okay? You’re not ugly.”

She drops her head again. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not lying.” He makes a noise when she shakes her head, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Look at you, okay? You’re gorgeous.”

She shakes her head again, but she’s smiling now. “You’re a good friend, Tommy,” she says before she walks away, and Tommy blinks after her for a moment. He’d always thought Adam was his only friend, but maybe – maybe they all have to stick together however they can.

  


“Hey,” Adam says, knocking on the door Tommy’s left ajar. He hovers in the doorway and doesn’t come inside.

Tommy scoots closer to the wall and pats the bedspread next to him. He hadn’t been doing much, just staring at the wall, imagining a day when he’s made it big as something and nobody can tell him what to do anymore, and if anybody’s mean to his friends, he can just hire a bunch of bruisers and take them around the back.

It’s a good fantasy, if a bit childish, and he’s been occupying himself with it for almost – forty minutes now, according to his alarm clock. He tries to remember if he and Adam had plans, if that’s why Adam’s come looking for him when he probably should be doing his homework or studying for Chem or something, but Adam doesn’t look mad, so maybe not. Guy can’t hide a sulk for shit.

“I waited for you,” Tommy says after a while, when Adam apparently can’t quite manage to open his mouth. He smiles in retrospect so it sounds less like he’s nagging. It’s not like he particularly minds that Adam didn’t show up. It’s just unusual.

“Um. Yeah.” Adam drums his fingers against the doorway. “Choir ran over.”

Tommy rolls his eyes. “Seriously, get in here,” he says, patting the bed again. “Stop lurking, you freak.”

Adam still takes forever to come inside and close the door behind him, and Tommy has to prompt him again before he actually takes a seat on the bed. It’s enough to make Tommy feel anxious, and he still hasn’t the slightest clue what’s actually going on.

“Come on,” he says – whines – after a while. “What’s up? Tell me.”

Adam takes a deep breath, deflates and blows air out his nostrils. Takes another breath. “I heard about that thing with Daisy.” He stares intently at his hands. “That was – sweet, of you.”

Jesus fuck, this school is the most ridiculous gossip mill there is, and barely anybody even talks to them.

“You would have done it, too,” Tommy says.

Adam shrugs. He still won’t raise his head. “Maybe. I hope so.”

Yeah, okay, maybe Tommy isn’t as convinced as all that, either. Whatever. But the way Adam’s acting it’s like something’s really wrong, and it’s freaking Tommy out. He can’t be smooth when he’s freaking out.

He elbows Adam in the side, finally, when he can’t take the silence anymore. “Seriously,” he says. “What’s up with you? You’re being all twitchy and shit.”

Adam twitches again. “Do you, like – like her.” It comes out flat, telling in its lack of emotion, and Tommy can’t believe they’re actually having this conversation right now. What are they, twelve? Fuck.

But, well. There are the butterflies, so apparently they really are. Twelve.

Still, Tommy slides his fingers between Adam’s to stop them from fidgeting, and then just kind of ends up leaving them there. “Daisy’s not who I want,” he says, heart in his throat, but Adam just kind of smiles jerkily before he ducks his head to hide his face. Tommy can still see his ears turn red.

“Okay,” Adam says quietly. He sounds pleased, though, and Tommy squeezes his hand once before he leans back against the headboard and goes back to dreaming about better days.

  


September spills over into October before they know it. Towards the end of the month, Adam gets lunchtime detention for completely bombing his physics midterm (‘tutoring,’ not detention, technically, but the overall effect is the same) and Tommy eats his lunch in his room for a while before he gets tired of it. Then he goes to sit with Ryan Ross and his crazy-haired buddy Ian, two freshmen with gleaming bracelets around their wrists, and even though they don’t talk, Ryan spends the whole time watching Tommy out of the corner of his eye.

It’s not until the first Friday of October or so that Adam finally has another quiz, gets an 86% and is let off the hook, and Tommy celebrates by dragging them both downtown to hang with the guys. 43 Millner Street is easy enough to find, even if Adam bitches under his breath the entire way down there (and the twenty minutes Tommy spends trying to remember if it’s left at the footbridge, or straight ahead) about how much trouble they’re going to be in if someone ferrets on.

“Would you relax?” Tommy snaps finally, hand already raised to knock on the door. “Nobody’s gonna fucking ferret on if you just stop being so god damn twitchy.”

He brings his knuckles down on the wood before Adam can say anything else, try and talk him out of it, before _Tommy_ can talk himself out of it, and he hears Adam suck in a sharp breath, and then he waits.

It feels like years.

Adam shifts at his side, half impatient, half terrified. Tommy lifts his hand again. One more time. He’s going to knock one more time – that’s okay, right? Not too pushy? Two tries, and then he’s going to go home and it won’t feel like he’s stumbling home with his tail tucked between his legs, and Adam won’t say anything like ‘I told you so.’

Then he hears slow, shuffling footsteps inside, and quickly drops his hand.

The door swings open a moment later. “Oh.” Gerard blinks. “It’s you guys.”

Tommy nods, trying hard to ignore the I-told-you-so look Adam shoots him from the corner of his eyes. “Yeah,” he says. “Frank said it was okay for us to come by. Whenever.”

“We’re waiting for pizza,” Gerard says. He blinks again, and then seems to remember that they’re all just standing around in the doorway and takes a step back. “We’re drinking beer,” he adds. “You can have some if you want.”

“That’s okay,” Adam says, before Tommy has the chance to elbow him in the side.

Gerard shrugs. “Whatever you want, man. It’s all okay with me.”

They bob their heads and shuffle past him awkwardly, into a surprisingly nice living/dining room area with tan carpets and light-colored wooden chairs and table. There are framed pictures arranged on the mantle and cute porcelain animals sitting in the half-empty bookshelves, and it’s just as well the rooms are empty, because Tommy could not imagine Frank kicking around here in a million years.

“The guys are in the basement,” Gerard says, gesturing at the stairs. He locks the door after peering hopefully down the street and motions for them to follow him down the narrow, carpeted steps, around a bend and through the only open one of three identical doors.

As nice and middle class as the upstairs is, this room is kind of a shithole. There are two saggy couches and a TV and a coffee table covered in beer cans and sticky rings where more beer cans used to be, grimy plates and empty take-out containers and a couple of empty handles half-hidden behind the mini-fridge by the door.

“Guys!” Frank cries happily from his perch on one of the couches. “Tommy! And Friend! What’s up?”

“Not much,” Tommy says. “We were just in the area. You know, figured we’d stop by.” He crosses his arms but then drops them because he doesn’t want to look defensive or anything, and then stands there like a total idiot.

“Good timing, man.” Frank leans forward a little. “We ordered pizza,” he confides.

“It’s not here yet,” Gerard says. He crawls onto the other couch and picks up the notebook lying on the cushions before he takes a swig from the open whiskey bottle sitting on the table.

Behind Tommy, Adam chokes on air.

Frank looks over at the sound. “Nice treads,” he says, gaze catching on Tommy’s dress shoes.

Tommy does cross his arms that time. “Fuck you, man, I don’t have anything else.”

Frank happily knocks his converse together in response. “Preppie.”

“Townie,” Tommy manages to get out before he starts laughing. “Do people actually call us that?”

“No idea, man, it’s not like we’re from here.” He pats the cushion next to him. “Come on, park your ass.”

Tommy’s already sitting before he notices Adam still hovering by the door, and he has to work pretty damn hard at not rolling his eyes as he beckons him over. “This is Adam,” he tells nobody in particular.

“Hey, Adam,” Frank says. He grins. “You’re right on time. We’re just getting ready to trash the place.”

“Seriously?” someone asks, and there’s another guy in the corner next to the TV, kneeling over a guitar and a pack of strings, spooning cereal into his mouth. He’s got funky hair and love handles and Frank calls him Ray when he tells him to lighten up.

“This is Ray’s uncle’s place,” Frank tells them, nodding at the curly-headed guy. “So we can hang here for free. Which is good, you know, ‘cause we’re pretty broke. Like, Mikey has a job, and Ray and I mow lawns and shit sometimes, so we’re not like, starving or anything.” He purses his lips thoughtfully. “Gerard mostly just sits around and scribbles.”

“Fuck you,” Gerard says, but considering he’s peering at them from the top of his notepad, his words lose some of their impact.

“Sometimes he gets drunk, too,” Frank says. He’s grinning behind his hand.

Gerard breathes a huffy sigh and retreats back behind his papers.

Frank grins harder. “Speaking of which,” he says, waving a hand at the empty beer cans on the table. “You want?”

“Jesus Christ, Frankie,” Ray says. He gets up and sets his bowl and spoon down on the coffee table. “They’re what, fifteen? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re trying to get laid.”

“I don’t need to get my lays drunk,” Frank protests, just as Tommy says, “I’m seventeen, thanks.”  
Ray raises an eyebrow at him. “Same difference.”

Tommy bites his tongue before he says something nasty, even if he’s not sure what he’d say, exactly, because these guys might be chill but he’s just the kid they picked up off the street, and Ray’s their friend, their band member, even if he is a giant dick. Thankfully the conversation gets derailed by the doorbell going, and somebody yelling, “Pizza.”

“Pizza,” Gerard says happily.

Ray scores himself some Brownie points by volunteering to go get it, but whatever. He’s got a lot of fucking points to make up.

Adam elbows Tommy in the side, frowning, and Tommy probably nudges back harder than strictly necessary. And then he feels bad, and then he gets annoyed about feeling bad, and he shuffles a bit away from Adam and is probably way happier to see Ray return with three boxes and a handful of change than he should be, given the circumstances.

Ray lets the first two clatter onto the coffee table and hands the third, smaller box to Frank. “Here’s your vegetarian, you freak.”

Frank flips the lid open and inhales blissfully. “I love you,” he says solemnly. “You brought me pizza.” He closes his eyes for a moment, but they pop open when a skinny guy in all-black appears in the doorway. “And a Mikey!”

“Hey,” apparently-Mikey says, possibly at Tommy and Adam, so Tommy gives him a bit of a wave.  
Mikey doesn’t respond, though, just sits down cross-legged on the ground next to Gerard’s perch on the edge of the couch.

“You want?” Gerard asks, and hands him a slice when Mikey nods, dripping grease all over the coffee table.

“Tommy says he plays guitar,” Frank announces happily, for Mikey’s sake because everybody else heard Tommy say it himself. “I like people who play guitar.”

Mikey cuts a quick, expressionless glance at him, and Tommy can feel himself flush. “A bit,” he says. “When I can sneak into the practice rooms. Mostly I just noodle around.”

Mikey nods. “Don’t ask Frank to teach you anything,” he says. His voice is kind of raspy. “He’s good, but he can’t teach to save his life.”

“Don’t bad-mouth me,” Frank protests, mock wounded, before he laughs. “I really am shit at teaching, though. You should ask Ray, he’s way more patient than me.”

Tommy privately thinks that Ray would have to be the last guitar player on Earth before Tommy would ask him to teach him anything, but instead he smiles a bit and takes a bite of his pizza. “So I’ve met your singer, two guitarists and the bass player. Where’s your drummer?”

Gerard shakes his head and says, through a mouthful of pizza, “No drummer.”

“But what about,” Tommy says, and waves a hand in a vague, _the guy who plays drums during your gigs_ kind of way.

Gerard swallows noisily. “He’s one of the club’s techies,” he says. “He’s been filling in. Our old drummer couldn’t be bothered to leave his cushy little nest for his band.” His tone’s casual, but there’s a hard set to his eyes, and he cuts a quick glance at Mikey next to him who keeps eating, unbothered.

“Okay,” Tommy says uneasily. Seriously, what do you say to that?

Thankfully, though, Mikey suddenly smiles at him. He picks up a second slice of pizza with his other hand, so he’s got both hands full, and nods his head at the TV/game console set-up. “You play Tekken?” he asks.

Tommy doesn’t much, but enough that he’s not getting completely clobbered (just mostly clobbered), and it’s hard to be mad about losing all the time when Mikey keeps making these snide little remarks and Frank’s throwing out his own sarcastic commentary and Gerard sucks so hard even Tommy can beat him. It’s a pretty rare feeling for Tommy these days, to just be around guys he gets along with and shoot the shit. It’s not like with Adam, which is amazing most of the time but kind of complicated. It’s just… it’s fun. It’s easy and fun and honestly, pretty damn great.

It’d be fucking amazing, in fact, if Adam wasn’t hovering in the corner like somebody personally shoved a stick up his ass, and does he just have to be such a mood killer all the time? Like, yeah, he’s Tommy’s best friend, but sometimes he could really make it a bit easier on both of them.

Gerard and Mikey and Ray don’t seem to notice or care, or maybe they’re just nice enough to pretend not to, but eventually Adam’s wallflower impression gets so bad that Frank pulls Tommy aside, which Tommy _really_ could have done without, thanks.

“Dude,” Frank says quietly. His breath is loud in Tommy’s ear. “Like, you’re cool, yeah, but can’t you get your buddy to relax a bit?”

“I’ll talk to him,” Tommy says, trying not to flush. Fucking Adam. He pats himself down uselessly. “You gotta cig?”

Frank hands him one. “Gotta smoke on the porch,” he says with an apologetic shrug. “House rules, and shit.”

“Fine,” Tommy says. He holds out his hand. “Lighter? Thanks.”

And then, with a hopefully not completely pathetic smile, he goes to make himself lung cancer fodder and hopefully get Adam to loosen up just a tiny little bit.

  


The backyard that goes with the house is completely boring. There’s a whole bunch of (trimmed, surprisingly) grass and a hedge, so the only thing worth watching is the agitated way Adam’s pacing all over the porch.

“Having a good time, I see,” Tommy finally can’t resist saying.

Adam starts so badly Tommy’s kind of surprised he doesn’t drop his can of coke. “Sorry,” he says. He smiles a bit, caught. “It’s not like, bad or anything.”

“Not bad, right,” Tommy says. “You just hate it.”

“I don’t _hate_ it,” Adam says. He rubs at his arms, like he’s cold. “It’s just weird, that’s all.”

Tommy tries really, really hard not to sigh, but from the look on Adam’s face, he can probably tell. “Just – can’t you try to relax? Even just a little bit?” He waves his hand at the door, trying not to show how fucking _frustrated_ he is. Adam drives him up the wall sometimes. “They’re not our parents, or our classmates or whatever, okay? They’re _friends_.”

Adam shakes his head.

“What does that mean?” Tommy asks, sharper than intended, but Adam doesn’t raise his eyes.

“I know they’re your friends, Tommy, okay? I know that. But they’re – they think I’m your weirdo sidekick, okay? They’d never hang out with me if it weren’t for you.”

“Seriously?” Tommy asks. He turns to the garden. Seeing Adam standing there, hunched in on himself, with all his fucking issues – it’s just pathetic, is what it is, and Tommy’s trying really hard not to think of Adam that way.

“I’m just – not as tough as you are, Tommy,” Adam says quietly.

“What are you talking about, man,” Tommy says without looking at him.

“Look,” Adam says, throwing his hands into the air with an exasperated sigh. “Maybe you can just waltz in here and feel right at home, like, these are your people or some shit like that, but I can’t do that, Tommy, okay? I’m not that guy.”

“You could be,” Tommy says stubbornly.

“No, I couldn’t,” Adam says. “That’s all you.”

Tommy kind of wants to be annoyed with him for that, but Adam’s standing there in front of him, shoulders slumped and all uncomfortable, and he can’t. He just can’t.

“Just, come here,” Tommy says, and draws him in.

Adam kisses sweetly, not that Tommy’s surprised, hesitant touch of lips to lips, zero tongue. Tommy doesn’t have a whole lot of kisses to compare it to – being nature’s freak in a place like Clarkenwell is the world’s most effective cock block – but he thinks he likes it. It’s very Adam.

He shifts a bit, touching his fingertips to Adam’s side. Adam stiffens a bit, though he doesn’t pull back, and instead of groping him, Tommy just lets his hand settle there, steady and reassuring. He almost ends up sighing into the kiss when Adam relaxes again, which is stupid but not something he can help. He _wants_ Adam to be relaxed. It’s a new thing, but Tommy thinks he likes it. He’s had crushes before, yeah, but he’s never felt like this about anyone: Like he wanted to take his time with them because _they_ wanted to take time. Like they’re worth it.

“Well now,” Frank says from somewhere behind Tommy, and Tommy can practically hear the smirk in his tone. “Werewolf _and_ a faggot. You’re just fucked all around, aren’t you?”

Tommy’s not sure what to make of that – it’d be kind of hypocritical of Frank to take offense at either, but his tone’s not exactly what you’d call friendly – but it doesn’t matter anyway because Adam practically trips over his feet in his haste to get away, darting worried looks at Frank and then Tommy and then Frank again before he mutters something about having to go and bolts inside.

Tommy sighs. He wanders over to where Frank’s standing in the doorway, smirking, and punches him in the arm _really fucking hard_. “Thanks for that, asshole,” he says.

“How was I supposed to know he’s so freaking touchy,” Frank complains, rubbing at his arm, and follows him back downstairs where Tommy heads over to the couch. Adam isn’t around. “Seriously though, man, you sweet on him? Beer?”

Tommy doesn’t say anything, just holds his hand out for the bottle Frank pulls out of the mini fridge before he collapses into the grimy cushions.

“I guess he’s a sweet guy,” Frank says finally, and Tommy knows him well enough to recognize a peace offering when he sees one, so he half-smiles and takes it.

  


“No,” Adam says, mostly to the lunch lady dishing up salad. He’d breezed past the pasta and the potatoes and the burgers, so maybe he’s on a diet again. One his parents probably don’t even know about. Again.

“Adam,” Tommy says.

Adam shakes his head. “No.”

“Adam, come on.” Tommy knows he’s whining, but this is stupid. “You can’t just not come just because of something Frank said.”

“It’s not just what Frank said,” Adam says slowly, like it’s painful to even admit that much.

“I thought we’d been over this,” Tommy says. “They like you fine, okay? They don’t think you’re a freak, and besides, it’s not like they really have room to talk.”

Adam drops his chin to his chest and mumbles something that Tommy’s brain takes a second to decipher into “Everybody thinks I’m a freak.”

“ _I_ don’t think you’re a freak,” Tommy says, feeling thick anger welling up in his belly.

Adam peers at him, doubting and a little hopeful, and Tommy sighs.

He nods his head towards the door instead of the loud, bustling tables full of uniformed students and Adam follows without complaint, down the corridor and out the door and across the lawn towards the trees lining the side of the tennis court, where it almost feels like you’re in a park or out in the forest somewhere if you don’t look up from your feet.

“Frank’s a dick,” Tommy says eventually. Maybe it isn’t the grand declaration all the romcoms seem to expect at this point, but Tommy isn’t a grand declarations kind of guy. Also, it kind of needs to be said.

Adam laughs, though, so maybe it’s enough. “I know that, Tommy,” he says. “Trust me. I hang out with the guy, too.”

“Yeah, well.” Tommy spreads his hands, palms up. “He still shoulda kept his big damned mouth shut, so.”

“Frank should keep his mouth shut a lot of the time,” Adam says, easy agreement.

“Right.” Tommy jerks his head in some kind of crappy half-nod. “So, are we like, good now? Because I like Frank and all, but if I have to pick between you and him, I’m gonna go with you, and he’s like, one of my best friends at this point, so if we could all kiss and make up or whatever, that’d be nice.”

“Aw, Tommy.” Adam stops walking, clutches his hands to his heart. “That was almost romantic.”

“So we’re good then?” Tommy presses, lifting his chin a little bit.

“Yeah, we’re good.”

Tommy nudges his chin a little higher, and Adam, pink and pleased, presses his lips against Tommy’s. “We’re good, I promise.”

“Good,” Tommy says. “’Cause I’d totally have to kick Frank’s ass otherwise, and I’m not one-hundred per cent sure I could. Dude’s wily.”

Adam slings his arm around Tommy’s shoulders. “It’s okay, I won’t ask you to be my knight in shining armor. I still think you’re badass, I promise.”

“I’m pretty badass,” Tommy agrees, slow and easy even though his heart thumps almost painfully hard in his chest. He slips his arm around Adam’s waist. “So you’re coming with me, right?”

“No,” Adam says, rolling his eyes, but there’s a smile on his face and Tommy totally doesn’t believe him.

  


As it turns out, Adam actually doesn’t come with him. His parents call him just after dinner and they talk for almost two hours, and when Tommy comes by to check on him he’s got his head buried in his books and barely even looks up to tell Tommy that he needs to pick up his grades and study hard and his parents are fighting, he can tell, and the last thing he needs is to give them more grief.

Tommy nods and sits down at Adam’s desk, because Adam needs him, okay, but the way his body’s hunched in on itself he might as well have _don’t touch me_ spelled out on his forehead in red ink.

“Do you-?” Tommy says, gesturing helplessly.

Adam shuts him down with a sharp shake of his head. “I need to read this,” he says. He doesn’t even look up.

“Okay,” Tommy says quietly. He rubs his sweaty palms against his thighs. “Do you want – I’m gonna go.”

“Yes,” Adam says. He doesn’t raise his head when Tommy gets up to go, and when Tommy hesitates at the door, he just curls more firmly around his book.

  


Sneaking out during the week, before lights-out and without Adam, is weird. It’s also a lot harder, people loitering around unexpected corners, and his uniform isn’t half as suitable for climbing out of windows and over fences as the jeans and t-shirts he’s got stuffed into a bag. The seams of his blazer crack alarmingly when he pulls himself away from Clarkenwell soil and onto the other side.

He tears a hole into the hem of his slacks, too, and even breaks his skin, as he discovers when he’s slipping on his jeans behind a bush. It’s just destined to be a shitty day, apparently. He just hopes no one decides to check up on him during lights-out, although even that’d probably just be icing on the cake at this point.

  


Tired and scowling, Tommy’s actually kind of pleasantly surprised when somebody opens the door after his first knock.

“Hey, man,” Mikey says when he pulls open the door. “I’m picking up take-out, you want any?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tommy says. His stomach’s totally ready for food, even though his last meal was only a couple of hours ago.

“Right,” Mikey says. He tilts his head into the house, and Tommy heads downstairs while Mikey wanders out the door.

Only Frank and Gerard are down there, hanging out on the couches as per usual. There’s an impressive number of open beer cans on the coffee table, and even more piled into a trash bag in the corner. Gerard’s eyes are pretty glassy, too.

“Where’s your sidekick?” Frank asks, grinning a bit.

Tommy rolls his eyes. “Studying,” he says. “You got beer?”

“You mooch,” Frank says, already reaching for their little fridge.

Tommy drains half the can in one go, slowly getting used to the bitter taste on his tongue, and Frank raises an eyebrow but still gets out a second for him. “Mortal Kombat?” he asks.

Gerard has the controllers out before Tommy even has the chance to nod.

  


They play for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes before the door swings open and Mikey stumbles in, multiple plastic bags hanging from each wrist. He dumps them all onto the coffee table when they pause the game and waves a hand at them in lieu of saying, ‘Dig in.’

“That was fast,” Gerard says, eyeing the take-out containers suspiciously.

Mikey shrugs. “Lady behind me saw the scar,” he says. “Never seen a place clear out that fast.”

“Dude, that is the _best_ ,” Frank crows. “I love it when that happens.” He mimes cowering away from an invisible something, actually making Mikey crack a smile. Then he slaps his hand down on Tommy’s thigh. “See, there are totally advantages to this wolf thing.”

“Faster take-out?” Tommy asks, quirking an eyebrow.

“Silver lining,” Frank says. He opens one of the containers and breathes in happily. “We’re the wolves, they’re the sheep. They just gotta accept that fact.”

“Silver lining, sure.” Tommy rolls his eyes. “’Cause, what, we’re like so much better than them?”

“No one’s better than anybody,” Gerard cuts in sharply.

Frank makes a yapping motion with his hand. “Leaving aside that we’re all, you know, equal and shit – yes. Dude. We have a fucking advantage they’ll never have. We know more.” He takes a sip of his beer. “And knowledge is power, and shit. You know.” He waves a vague hand, and then he giggles, but Tommy can’t tell if he’s delighted or disgusted with himself.

Tommy reaches up to scratch at the back of his neck. It’s a habit he’s trying to break, but sometimes his scar still gets itchy and annoying, and he can never quite forget it’s there. “I could have gone forever without that knowledge,” he mutters. “Not gonna lie.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Frank asks, propping himself up on his elbows. “Shifting is like, the best thing to ever happen. I feel bad for all the suckers who’ll be stuck in human shape all their lives.”

“Tell that to the guys at Clarkenwell,” Tommy mutters. Tell that to everybody, actually. Tell it to the doctors who treated him after Tommy got bit, the ones who refused to even show him into the waiting room without sterile gloves, or the counselor who told him over and over what an idiot he was as if he didn’t _know_ , or the psychiatrist who told his mom that the nightmares he had over being held down and bitten by a giant fucking wolf were a side-effect of his new identity as a wild and crazy beast, and had nothing to do with trauma.

Frank doesn’t seem to have noticed Tommy’s swerve down memory lane. “In my family, being wolves is a point of pride,” he says. “Like, my first day of kindergarten.” Frank pauses to giggle. “First day, right, we’re not even inside yet, and my dad pulls me aside and is like, ‘Kid, if anybody gives you shit, go straight for the nose, okay? Forget the teacher, the only person watching your back in there is you.’”

Tommy tries to imagine his mom saying something like that, but instead he sees her wearing that frown she always gets out when Tommy does something shitty or fucks up a grade or doesn’t appreciate Clarkenwell enough, what the fuck, so he banishes the image again.

“Why are you here, then?” he asks. “If your family’s so awesome?”

“’Cause of the fucking riots, dude.” Frank scrubs at his face. “Like, the Ways wanted Mikey out of the way, right, and Mikey wouldn’t go without Gerard, and what am I gonna do, kicking around Jersey without a band?”

“Thanks for broadcasting that for the world to hear, Frank, that’s real charming,” Gerard says lazily. 

Mikey doesn’t say anything, mouth tilting sideways. Frank waves both of them off with a “Sure, you’re welcome, whatever,” and they grin at him or each other or somebody, lips curving into similar shapes. 

Tommy images, just for a second, what that must feel like, to have friends that you’d move to fucking Ricker Hill for, before his brain catches on something else. “What riots?” he asks.

“The New York riots?” Frank says. He sounds like he’s talking to a two-year-old, all slow and prompting. “You know, when Wall Street was shut down for two days because wolves and sympathetics and just about everybody were having a giant smack down with the po-po?”

Tommy shakes his head, wide-eyed.

Frank goes a little bug-eyed himself. “Seriously, do you not even read the news at that posh little school of yours?”

“We don’t really have access to any newspapers,” Tommy says.

This time, it’s Gerard and Frank’s turn to look incredulous. Mike doesn’t look much of anything, but he almost drops his cigarette, so Tommy figures he’s shocked too.

“What about TV, then?” Frank presses. “Hell, word-of-mouth. Anything.”

Tommy shakes his head. “Restricted access,” he says. “They don’t want us to get corrupted, or something.”

“Don’t want you to grow a brain, more like,” Frank mutters.

“That, too.” Tommy shrugs. “Not really for free thinkers, you know?”

Frank giggles a bit. “I kinda wish I could unleash my grandma on this heap,” he says. “Man. That’d be a show.”

It sounds awesome. It definitely sound a whole lot better than Tommy’s mom’s I’m-concerned-about-you-but-you’re-an-idiot face that she likes to unleash on _him_.

“I wanna meet your family,” Tommy sighs. He doesn’t mean to, but he does.

“Sure,” Frank agrees easily. “They’re down in Jersey, it’s not that far off. I can take you guys down for Thanksgiving, if you’re allowed to leave this shithole.”

“Dude, it’s not like they shackle us to the wall,” Tommy says. “We can leave for a weekend if we let them know in advance.”

To be honest, the school code definitely specifies that leaving for a weekend is okay as long as you actually go home, not on some random trip to, say, Jersey to meet an exiled punk-musician werewolf’s extended family, but no way is Tommy actually going to admit to that.

“Cool,” Frank says. “Thanksgiving, then. It’s a-”

“Date,” Tommy cuts in, smirking. “I won’t tell Jamia if you won’t.”

“Oh baby.” Frank laughs, kicking at Tommy’s shins. “I’m fucking overcome with desire here, you shithead.”

Gerard clutches his stomach. “Fuck, man, I’m getting nauseous.”

“Fuck you, man, we’re not that bad.”

“No, like, seriously.” And he heaves himself off the couch and stumbles out the door, and Frank and Tommy and Mikey all stare at each other for a moment before Frank shrugs and digs out another round of beers.

  


“Hey, Tommy,” somebody calls.

Somebody female, which is uncommon enough that Tommy’s frowning when he looks up from his locker.

It’s just Daisy, though, waving at him, and Tommy just barely catches sight of her smile and returns it with one of his own before she loses her balance. She goes down hard, knees smashing against the tile, in a flurry of papers. Tommy isn’t sure who tripped her, but it doesn’t really matter – he’s on his knees next to her a moment later, helping her shove everything into untidy piles and stuff them back into her binder.

“Thank you,” she says hastily, not even really looking at his face.

“You okay?” he asks her, one hand on her elbow to guide her up. Man, Gerard would be proud.

“Sure.” She smiles, just a little bit, and pushes a lock of hair behind one ear. “Nothing they haven’t done before, I can handle it.”

“Fuckers,” Tommy says before he can think better of it.

Her eyes go wide for a moment, like, good-girl wide, but then she presses the heel of her hand against her mouth to hide a giggle. “You could say that, yes.”

Tommy hands her her folder, smiling a bit, and gets a whiff of her deodorant-maybe-perfume when she leans forward, flash of teeth half-hidden behind a curtain of hair.

“Thank you, Tommy,” she says softly.

Tommy doesn’t bother with ‘you’re welcome.’

  


Nobody answers at 43 Millner Street, not even when Tommy pounds his fist against the window by the door. The glass rattles alarmingly, and Adam makes an attempt at a soothing “Tommy,” but Tommy’s not having it. Not right now.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Adam starts, but Tommy shouldn’t a lot of things and he’s tired of it. He silences Adam with a glare and folds his hands around his face to peer inside. There isn’t anybody inside but the back door is wide open, and that’s all the invitation Tommy needs right now.

“Tommy,” Adam grouses when Tommy steps off the porch and into the flower bed next to it.

“Shit, seriously?” Tommy hears him say, but then he’s around the corner of the house and Adam has to hurry to catch up with him, radiating disapproval but thankfully silent.

He’s right, the back door _is_ wide open. There’s no sign of any crime though, past or in-progress, so he pokes his head in and whisper-shouts, “Hello?”

Nobody answers him this time either, but there are definitely voices coming from downstairs, and whatever. Frank said anytime, so anytime it is.

He wipes the worst of the soil from his shoes and tiptoes across the carpet and down the stairs, ignoring Adam’s steadily more pointed sighs. The basement door is open. This close, Tommy can make out Gerard’s voice along with a few others, and he steps all the way into the room before he hesitates.

“Oh hey, look, trespassers,” Frank says lazily. He’s lying sprawled out on the couch, taking up a lot of space for such a small dude, apparently deeply engrossed in drinking his beer and playing Madden at the same time. Tommy’s not sure what Mikey and Gerard and Ray are doing, sitting crosslegged in a circle on the floor, but it looks like a really, _really_ vicious version of three-person Red Hands that somehow includes a set of cards.

At least Frank tucks in his legs a little bit so Adam and Tommy can squeeze onto the couch side by side. Adam, on the end, drapes his arm around Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy wriggles his arm between Adam and the couch and up onto his stomach. A moment later, he slides his hand underneath Adam’s shirt and gets a quick grin in return, and an eye roll from Frank, but Frank can suck it.

Somebody yells from across the room and then Ray’s scrambling back against the wall while the Way brothers roll around on the floor, not really fighting but still struggling for the upper hand, scattering cards everywhere.

Frank’s pretty unfazed by it all, lifting his feet right before Gerard’s back slams into the couch below them. Mikey manages to get on top for a split second, pining one of Gerard’s hands while his brother slaps at his torso with the other.

Tommy tucks his feet onto the pillow he’s sitting on, eyes drawn to Mikey’s back. The bite on his neck is hard to miss from this close, jagged scars where teeth tore the skin. It makes Tommy’s fingers itch to reach up and slide them across his own. It makes him wonder if Gerard is like this on full moons, too – if he rough-houses with Mikey then, if he can see past that tiny little elephant of a snag in treating his kid brother like everyone else when any minute, Mikey might lose grip and infect him, too.

It definitely doesn’t seem to bother him right now – he’s grinning like an idiot when he finally manages to get Mikey flipped around, and then digs his fingers into Mikey’s armpits. Mikey doesn’t really make a sound, even, which would be odd if it were anyone else, but he sort of writhes and flails and finally stills under the onslaught.

“Knock it off, Gee,” he says. Tommy can’t really tell if he’s amused or annoyed, and for a second he thinks Gerard will just keep going, but then the guy presses a quick kiss to Mikey’s forehead and gets up. He even reaches down a hand to help Mikey to his feet and Mikey doesn’t even try to yank him back down, which makes him a better person than Tommy and most likely Frank. Instead, he brushes at the knees of his jeans, pulls his t-shirt down where it’s ridden up past his hips, and heads for the stairs, giving the basement door a yank as he goes.

“Where are you going?” Gerard calls after him.

“To get ready for work,” Mikey calls back. “It’s not like I can get out of it just because I’m hanging out with jailbait.” The door swings shut and then bangs open again, and they can just see the last of Mikey’s legs and his battered sneakers disappearing up the stairs.

“You’re a dick!” Gerard yells, and then gives Tommy and Adam an apologetic shrug. “He’s a dick.” 

“He’s right,” Adam says softly.

“Still a dick.” Frank grins.

“But.” Adam waves his hand between himself and Tommy, what the fuck. He can be all noble if he wants, but Tommy would totally kick him in the thigh for dragging Tommy into it, too, if Frank and Gerard weren’t both watching them.

“We’re like, high schoolers, you guys. You could get into so much trouble.”

“Yeah, ‘cause the weed and the underage drinking –“ Frank points at himself for that one “-and the occasional pills and the noise complaints are just no big deal at all.”

“At least you’re over eighteen,” Ray says. He doesn’t look at Tommy or Adam when he gets to his feet. “I’m gonna head out too,” he says. “Michaels at the grocery store said he’d pay me time and a half to carry all his heavy shit into the cellar.”

“You got it, man,” Frank says, apparently unconcerned by the nasty look Tommy sends Ray’s way. “Carry heavy shit. Go forth and be productive.”

“Maybe you can be productive, too,” Ray says, nudging a beer can that topples over with a hollow clunk.

“Never,” Frank exclaims. He presses his hands to his heart. “Why must you say such things?”

Ray rolls his eyes, but he’s totally smiling a bit while he collects his shoes and disappears out the door.

“Dick,” Tommy mutters under his breath.

Adam gives him a look, half shocked, half sympathetic, but neither Gerard nor Frank seem to have heard. Which is, you know, probably a good thing.

“Okay, wow, mood killer,” Frank says. “Who wants beer?”

“Frank thinks beer cures everything,” Gerard adds. He nudges Frank aside so he can sit down next to him.

“You can’t drown your problems,” Adam counsels wisely, which, what the fuck? Way to come off as a pretentious ass.

Thankfully, though, Frank just laughs. “But I can damn well try,” he says. “Cheers.”

“Do you have problems, Adam?” Gerard asks, leaning forward. He’s swaying a bit. “Because you can tell us, you know? We won’t judge.”

Adam gapes at him, eyes going big. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so painful. Or maybe it’d be painful if it weren’t so hilarious.

“Yeah, man, tell us all your problems.” Frank burps, laughs. “Except the gay thing. That’s not a secret.”

“Oh, you’re gay?” Gerard asks while Adam sputters. “That’s completely okay, I promise. My Chemical Romance doesn’t discriminate.”

“I, I,” Adam sputters. He shoots a help-seeking look at Tommy, but there’s no way Tommy’s getting involved in this. Adam’s on his own with this one.

“No, seriously.” Frank reaches over Tommy to bump his fist into Adam’s shoulder. “We don’t care who you stick your dick into, Adam,” he says. He waggles his eyebrows. “Or who sticks his into you.”

“Right.” Adam goes bright red, like, fire-engine red, but he manages a smile. “Thanks, Frank.”

“It’s all good.” Frank arches off the couch to fiddle with the twenty-four-pack sitting next to it, hanging upside down. Gerard slings an arm around his waist to keep him from tipping off entirely, but he doesn’t look too bothered. Eventually Frank resurfaces with a handful of cans stacked together between his hands, but he doesn’t actually move away, just settles himself more comfortably in Gerard’s lap before he holds out a beer.

“Have a brew.”

Tommy pops the top and drinks, pretends not to notice the fuzzy bubbles creeping up his nose, pretends not to notice how Adam’s mouth twists with reluctance when he takes his own can. Guy can take care of himself. He’s a big dude, he can handle it.

  


The next Monday, Mrs. Mackenzie hits them with a pop quiz that everyone except Tommy seems to know about it. It could be that she announced it last class when Tommy’s head was full of riffs and chords and the beat of drums, or maybe everybody else just practiced their poker face a whole bunch since the last test she sprung on them. Far more likely, though, is that somebody caught wind of the thing and let everybody know except Tommy, because why would anybody tell the resident freak anything?

Tommy ends up guessing a whole bunch of shit about Napoleon based on the timeline he vaguely remembers from last week, and squinting at the test sheet of the girl sitting next to him, and probably doesn’t do as badly as he could. At least he knows the Battle of Waterloo wasn’t in 1914.

It doesn’t help him any when he gets a – too well-aimed to be accidental – volley ball to the face in P.E. and has to sit out the rest of the class period and half of Spanish because his nose won’t stop bleeding. Adam comes to the nurse’s office during his break and sneaks him a Snickers bar and eats three of his own sitting next to Tommy on the cot, wide-eyed and pale. He flinches when Tommy elbows him in the side, and his smile is nothing more than tentative when Tommy says, “Hey, man, I’m fine, alright?” around the wad of tissues he’s pressing to his nose.

He manages to barely get out of lunchtime tutoring when he gets his History quiz back with a 76% inked at the top in stark red, thank fuck, and spends two seconds resolving to crack open his books again at some point before he heads over to Adam’s room to talk him into going down to see the guys on Friday or Saturday. Being in Clarkenwell is turning his brain into mush. He’s honestly not sure how he’s going to take all this bullshit much longer.

Adam hems and haws but finally his eyes catch on the bruising across the bridge of Tommy’s nose and Tommy knows he’s won even though Adam says he has to think about it.

Fuck thinking about it. If there’s anything Tommy needs to do, it’s to _not_ think about anything.

  


“I think we’re getting good at this,” Tommy says when they get to Millner Street with only a minimum of scrapes and strained muscles to show for their troubles.

“Good at breaking the rules,” Adam says. “Great.”

“Would you rather get caught every time?” Tommy asks him, jogging ahead to climb the three steps up to the porch. There’s a crookedly torn sheet of notebook paper taped to the door.

  
_Tommy &Adam – come on in, door’s open  
sales people, cops, jerkfaces – fuck off_  


“Charming,” Adam says, hint of a smile hovering at the corner of his mouth.

“You like it, don’t lie,” Tommy says, reaching for the doorknob.

“Yeah, sure,” Adam says on their way down the stairs. “I like, totally love it. I can barely contain myself.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” Tommy says. He’s got a headache, nothing major, but it’s annoying enough for him to reach up and try to rub it away. “God damn it,” he says. “I think Mrs. Mackenzie like, fucked with my brain or something. Feels like it’s melting.”

“Sounds gross,” Adam says noncommittally, and pushes open the basement door.

Only Gerard and Frank are there, Frank playing some fighter game on their PlayStation and Gerard half-melted into his couch, face buried in the cushions.

“Yo guys,” Frank says. “What’s up.”

Adam sits down on the couch, then gets back up again and gingerly removes an empty cookie tray from the seat. “Prep school is melting Tommy’s brain,” he says once he’s comfortably settled.

“Gee, really?” Frank doesn’t look up from his button-mashing. “Color me surprised.”

“Not just mine,” Tommy says, perching on the back of the couch and kicking Adam lightly in the side. “Adam’s just too chicken shit to actually admit it.”

“I am not,” Adam huffs.

Tommy rolls his eyes. “So you’re not bored out of your fucking mind doing Twinkle Twinkle or whatever in choir for the third year in a row?”

Gerard, predictably, pushes himself vaguely upright. “Choir?” he asks.

Adam shrugs and doesn’t look up. “Kind of,” he says. “I mean, I had some lessons in San Diego, and my teacher said I was pretty good, but obviously the choir teacher doesn’t quite agree, and who am I-“

“It’s retarded,” Tommy insists, cutting through Adam’s self-depreciating babble. He slides down into the seat. “He’s the best singer in our entire school, and he’s stuck in the last row because he’s got the _gene_.”

“The _gene_ ,” Frank echoes him, voice pitched all spooky and waggling his fingers before he cracks up.

“You can sing?” Gerard asks, undeterred.

Adam picks at the hem of his shirt. “Like I said…” he mutters.

Tommy slouches across the couch to kick his ankle. “He’s amazing,” he tells Gerard. “Seriously, make him sing something. Anything. He’ll blow your mind.”

“Sing _Want of a Nail_ ,” Frank says, like that’s even a challenge.

Adam hems and haws until Tommy elbows him in the side, and then he opens his mouth and delivers the chorus flawlessly. Adam likes to show off. It’s buried deep, underneath his lack of self-esteem and his self-consciousness and complete and utter terror of public embarrassment. So it’s no wonder that it took Tommy forever to figure it out, but. Adam likes attention. Positive attention. It makes him glow.

And he may deny it, but Tommy can see the pleased flush on his cheeks when Gerard nods, says, “That’s really good,” when Frankie whistles through his teeth. Tommy doesn’t say anything. He already knew Adam is awesome – he just has to make the rest of the world see it, too.

  


It ends up sneaking up on him.

It’s usually impossible for him to forget, for him to do anything but watch the symbols on his calendar steadily creep up to a complete, blank circle, but there’s so much going on and he’s having fun, he actually is for the first time in a long time, and he just totally forgets. He’s bumming around homeroom, trying to look like he’s doing his homework and half-watching the sun tilt down towards the treetops and when the lady on the PA calls for _Anderson, Maria_ he actually wonders what she’s supposed to have done before the list runs down a set of familiar names and he remembers.

It’s like being dunked in ice water. Everybody’s eyes are on him while he shoves his book and notepad into his bag and heads for the door, for the cellars. Nate nods at him when he comes out of the gym and falls into step beside him, damp hair curling at the base of his neck, but they don’t speak.

Nate holds the door to the basement open for Tommy and some mousey little sophomore who comes up behind them to slip through. The door falls shut behind them with a hair-raising thud, one that practically spells out _trapped and doomed forever_. Sometimes Tommy really misses California and its flimsy architecture.

Adam’s waiting at the foot of the stairs, shifting from foot to foot. He manages a smile for Tommy, but Tommy doesn’t even have time to react, to mutter something reassuring, before Clarkenwell’s guard dogs shows up behind him and snaps at them all to get a move on. And then it’s time to strip down, eyes always on him, and shuffle around on the cold floor while the heavy lock snaps shut like it’s the door of a high security vault.

Tommy takes a deep breath. It stutters out as a sigh.

There’s not really a whole lot left for him to do at this point except pace around and wait for the sun to set. He hates this part, it’s always the worst. At least there’s a breath of fresh air sweeping in through the cracked-open window, though, and Tommy breathes it in for a moment, imagining himself running through the fields, feet/paws hitting the packed dirt, before he shakes himself out of the fantasy. It’s not gonna help him any if he turns into a total pussy while no one’s paying attention.

Instead, he turns and tries to peer out through the spy-hole. It’s pointless, which he knows because he does it every time, but he does it every time because it gives him something to do. It’s routine. It doesn’t even matter that he’s locked up in a dark, cold, lonely cellar with nothing to protect his feet from the cement below him and not even bricks to count to entertain him, because Tommy can still peer out that spy-hole like a motherfucking champ.

“Well, this is fucked up.”

Tommy whirls around at the sound of Frank’s voice, and there he is, the crazy bastard, peering through the window with his hands on his knees.

“What are you doing here, are you crazy?” Tommy whispers. He still edges closer.

“People have assumed so, yes.” Frank rattles the metal on the window a little bit. “So much for not shackling you to the wall,” he comments.

Tommy lifts his wrists into the air. “Shackle-free,” he says.

Frank nods. “Also buck-naked, and stuck in a three-by-three cell. Seriously, fuck this shit.”

“Nothing to fuck, either,” Tommy says, attempting a smile that Frank barely returns.

Instead, he mutters something about disgrace and something that sounds decidedly bloodthirsty, and then he kicks at the window hinge a couple of times. “Ready for a night of freedom?” he asks. “I think I can get this open.”

“What?” Tommy asks, voice flipping hysterically. “You can’t just let me out, Frank. It’s a full moon tonight.”

“I’m well aware,” Frank says . He bends down to peer at the damage he’s done. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“You’re going to shift, too,” Tommy remembers. “Shit, you need to get out of here.”

“I do, yes,” Frank says gravely. “I was thinking you might want to accompany us.”

Tommy’s eyes damn near bug out of his head. “ _What_?”

‘”You want me to leave you down there to rot?” Frank asks, deadly serious, and no, Tommy doesn’t want that at all. He probably couldn’t even convince someone of that if he had to.

He shakes his head. “Get me outa here,” he says.

Frank nods, grins. “Stand back,” he says, and starts kicking at the window frame until it’s so bent out of shape that Tommy can squeeze past it with the help of Frank and a second hand that appears through the frame.

It turns out to belong to Mikey, Gerard’s brother. Tommy climbs to his feet and dusts himself off before he dips his head in Mikey’s direction. “What’s up, Frank,” he says.

“You’ve met Mikey,” Frank says, gesturing.

Mikey nods.

“You’re both completely fucked in the head,” Tommy tells them. “Seriously, I’m not kidding. You could get arrested.”

“You could get expelled,” Frank throws back. He crosses his arms. “Do you want us to stick you back down there?”

The sane answer is yes, but Tommy takes one look at the tiny window and the grey-tinted darkness beyond it and knows he could never actually ask to go back there.

“Fuck no,” he says, turning away and crossing his arms. He gestures at the next window over, entirely closed. “Adam’s down there.”

“Great,” Frank says, all teeth, and delivers a sharp kick to the bolt. He barely has time to attack it again before Adam’s face appears at the window, eyes startled and wide.

“Frank,” he mouths, inaudible through the pane.

“Hi Adam,” Frank says loudly. “We’re gonna spring you, if that’s okay?”

“What?” Adam mouths back.

Frank motions for him to stand back and aims a kick at the metal frame. Tommy really hopes those boots of his are steel-capped, because he really doesn’t want to have to deal with a bunch of broken toes tonight. Maybe he does, because Frank doesn’t even flinch, just kicks at it over and over until the metal’s loose enough for him to wrangle it out of the frame.

“Come on then,” he tells Adam, motioning.

“But!” Adam protests, even as he lifts his hands for Tommy and Mikey to haul him up. “What are you doing? We can’t just climb out! What if we hurt somebody?”

“We’re not gonna,” Frank says. He sounds so sure, so damn sure, that Tommy can feel himself relax into it. They’re not gonna hurt anybody. They’re gonna be fine.

Frank gives Adam a sharp yank to haul him through the window (he almost doesn’t fit) and then drops him to the ground, letting him land with a soft noise. Mikey lets go a moment later.

“There could be campers in the woods,” Adam insists, scrambling to his feet. “We’re not gonna be ourselves – we won’t have control. What if we eat them?”

“Wolves don’t eat people,” Frank says.

Mikey rolls his eyes in agreement.

“We hunt game, like every fucking wolf does. People only get hurt when they get caught in the crossfire, and anyone dumb enough to be out in the woods on a full moon kind of deserves it.”

Adam throws Tommy a help-seeking look, but Tommy just shrugs. He’s made up his mind. Adam can stay here without him if he wants.

“Maybe you won’t have control,” Mikey says slowly, startling all of them, “but we do.”

Adam blinks. Tommy can feel himself mirror the movement. “You do?”

Mikey nods. “We’ll keep you in check,” he says, tiny little smirk gracing his lips.

“Well then.” Tommy bounces on his feet a little. He thinks he’s picking that up from Frank. “If Mikeyway says.”

“Mikeyway says,” Mikey says, and then he turns and just starts walking away and they stare after him like idiots until Frank motions for them to hurry the hell up.

  


Mikey finally calls a halt in a thicket of trees that affords at least some kind of privacy when the sun’s already blood red on the horizon. He looks around a little bit and then starts stripping his shirt off, just like that, ribs showing as he stretches.

Tommy can see Adam gaping and he wasn’t want to do that, be that guy, but he’s already naked, so he turns and watches the sun disappear, sliver by sliver, and then it’s gone and the moon’s at his back and he can feel the shift creeping up his spine.

Usually this is where he fights, hanging onto his consciousness until it’s wrenched from him violently, but it’s different out here. Like this. It doesn’t feel quite as bad, as unnatural, out in a forest surrounded by three other naked guys who are all waiting for the same thing to happen to them. More dignified, perhaps. Less like a punishment, and more like a way of life.

He smiles at himself for that, because way to sound like a fucking hippie, and ducks his head when he feels his bones begin to change. Shifting doesn’t hurt. It never does – his body is designed for the changes now, after all. It feels weird, that’s all, skin stretching to accommodate his growing bones. The first time was weird, terrifying, but it’s almost normal now. He’s expecting this. He’s all prepared for his vision to blur, too, for his mind to go blank, but for some reason, it doesn’t.

He twists his changing skull around, looking for the others. They’re mid-shift, too, and Mikey’s got yellow eyes in a human face that are fixed on Tommy, bright and aware, and Tommy drops his head and shudders in confusion.

It’s never like this. Usually, Tommy’s mind just… goes away halfway through the shift, when he’s cowering on the floor so he won’t lose his balance but he can still see fingernails clawing at the concrete. He remembers snatches sometimes, the smell of damp and dark or the light of the moon through the window, but usually, he wakes up at first light, curled on the floor in a shivering heap, his mind blissfully blank.

This time isn’t like that. He still doesn’t catch all of it, but he catches _some_ things. It’s disjointed, like a badly cut movie – he’s running, pads of his feet slapping against the moist ground; he’s surrounded by brethren, by _friends_ ; he’s splashing into a stream with a happy sound that can only be described as a yowl; he’s pouncing on a big, big wolf that he just knows is Adam, Adam who’s just as playful, rolling around the underground with him and trapping him with his paws, still careful in his victory.

For the first time since he crossed over, Tommy doesn’t wake up hating himself. Instead, the sight of the pink sky through the window, awkwardly bent back into shape, makes him smile. He pushes himself to his feet and looks himself over, but there aren’t any of the usual bruises and tears where he assumes he claws at the walls. The pads of his feet are sore and he has to stretch his hands a little bit, but he feels good. He feels _great_.

He startles at the sound of keys turning in the lock, and then footsteps, shuffling away, stopping every couple of feet. Finally they come closer again and then away. Tommy listens until the dull thuds that are heavy boots on the stairs have faded away completely, and then he eases open the door. His clothes are on the floor just beside it, where he left them, and while he’s squirreling into his underwear Adam pushes his own door open and reaches around for his uniform. He hides his body behind the wall, just a sliver of bare shoulder visible, but he somehow looks more naked for it than Tommy feels, standing there in just his skivvies.

But then Adam catches his eyes and this wide, exhilarated smile spreads across his face, and Tommy can’t help but smile back. He bounces around while Adam gets into his clothes and barely remembers to get his own pants on and shirt thrown over his shoulders. He probably looks ridiculous, and he’s not even offended when Adam emerges, impeccably dressed, and bursts out laughing.

“Come on,” he says, tugging on Adam’s wrist. It’s still only six or so – maybe they can sleep for an hour (two if they skip breakfast) before they have to get to class.

  


Tommy manages to toss and turn his way through a couple of disjointed dreams before his alarm goes off, and just barely gets himself dragged down to the classrooms before the bell rings. He stares blearily at the board during Spanish and copies down the homework off the girl next to him while she’s doodling hearts in the margins of her notebook because he can’t make out which part of the scribbled mess on the blackboard is actually important. In Bio, he gets back a B+ on a test he thought he’d fucked up and that’s actually kind of nice, but then he has Mrs. Sallivan and the day takes a sharp downward turn again. He dozes through her lecture until she catches him at it, snaps at him that he shouldn’t expect preferential treatment just because of the bracelet on his wrist and that if the rest of his classmates can stay awake, then so can he. One of the guys behind him kicks his chair when her back is turned, and Tommy pays attention after that, if only because he can’t unclench his jaw enough to go back to sleep.

Mrs. Sallivan gives him the evil eye when he stumbles out of the room, but at least it’s lunchtime now. He’s free for a whole forty-five minutes, which is pretty much a three-day-weekend at this point as far as Tommy’s concerned.

Adam waves at him when Tommy stumbles into the food hall, from Ryan and Freshman’s table. There’s enough space for three people between him and Ryan, so they’re probably not sitting _together_ together, but Tommy’s got glassy eyes and almost falls over some chick’s bag on his way over, so he’s not really willing or able to contemplate the intricacies of the way Adam and the two others are sitting.

At least they all look just as wrecked as he does, and nobody tries to make conversation. Freshman almost falls asleep in his garlic pasta. It makes Tommy feel absurdly better.

He really wants to blame his state of near-delirium on what happens next, but that’s probably a lie. Just – Adam reaches for the salt sitting by Ryan’s elbow, and Tommy sees the way his muscles bunch and stretch underneath the fabric of his blazer, and his brain goes, _hot_. Which is completely ridiculous, and Tommy stares at Adam’s arm for a little bit, trying to figure out what happened that would warrant that kind of reaction from his clearly ridiculous mind.

Eventually, Adam notices him gaping and smiles uncertainly. “What?” he asks, salt shaker poised over his plate.

“Uh.” Tommy shakes his head. “Nothing,” he mutters.

Adam smiles then, bright and real, and an expression that used to be cute and nothing more now has Tommy’s mouth going dry. It’s fucking freaky, is what it is.

He pushes his chair back, mumbling something about getting something from his locker.

Adam just nods and gets up too, of _course_. He doesn’t say anything else while they walk, but he keeps glancing at Tommy, and Tommy doesn’t dare look again until Adam’s bent into his locker, pants stretching over his ass, legs long and lean, and Tommy’s brain promptly sputters out again.

Rationally, Tommy understands that Adam hasn’t changed. He’s still a bit pudgy and fidgety and a total scaredy-cat, but every time Tommy looks at him, he sees the wolf instead, mid-jump, stretched and graceful and so fucking badass.

Adam catches him looking again, after a while, flushing at the attention. He’s gonna have to get over that if he really wants to be a singer, Tommy thinks idly, and then tries to make himself be less obvious, but it’s hard. He obviously doesn’t succeed because by the time sixth period rolls around and they’re fiddling with their lockers again, shoving their books inside and, in Adam’s case, sweeping out all the little paper balls someone poured inside as a joke, Adam glances at Tommy every couple of seconds, looking increasingly twitchy every time. It probably doesn’t help that he always catches Tommy staring back.

“Seriously, what?” he asks after a while, dropping his gaze to the floor.

Tommy shrugs and pushes away, strides down the hall and tries to ignore Adam stumbling after him and pleading, “Come on, Tommy, tell me what’s wrong.” And then Adam’s scrabbling for his arm, tugging insistently. “Shit, Tommy,” he hisses. “Tommy. That’s Frank.”

It is, it actually is. Tommy thinks his eyes might bug out of his head. He blinks a couple of times, but it’s still Frank, wearing a Clarkenwell uniform down to the fucking shined leather shoes. He looks over his shoulder a couple of times, casually like he’s just waiting for someone, and Tommy probably would have bought the act if he didn’t know better. Then he gets out a tube of superglue, unscrews it, pops open the locker and begins to line the inside where the door matches up with the frame with the liquid, quickly and efficiently, across and down. He disappears the tube into his pocket, checks his reflection in the mirror on the inside of the door, snags a pack of gum lying on top of a stack of textbooks, and casually pushes the locker shut.

“He’s crazy,” Adam breathes next to Tommy’s ear, and much as Tommy would like to defend him, it’s really kind of the truth.

Frank still hasn’t noticed them, bobbing around on his feet, unsubtly looking around for something else to fuck with. “Hey, man,” he even says to somebody, and grins brightly when the guy gives him a startled look. God, Frank’s such a dumbass. He’s gonna get them killed. He’s gonna get _himself_ killed.

“Yo! Frank!” Tommy whispers, once Frank’s not-friend is gone.

Frank turns, grinning wide when he sees them, and ambles over. “You guys caught that, yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah, we caught that.” Tommy shoves at Frank’s shoulder. “You fucking psycho, what is wrong with you?”

Frank looks a bit taken aback by that, but then he bounces on his toes and grins. “You just wish you had the fucking balls to do that,” he says.

The problem is, he’s not entirely wrong. But Tommy and Adam, they’re here on scholarship, and as fun as it would be to go around causing shit, Tommy can admit – to himself, if nobody else – that he’s too chicken-shit to risk getting thrown out. He just hopes no one hears his voice waver when he says, “You’re crazy.”

Frank shrugs. He looks around but the hallways are nearly empty now, everybody in their classrooms already, and he purses his lips. “You guys should take off,” he says. “Wouldn’t do if somebody noticed you missing and thought you had anything to do with that.”

He gestures vaguely over his shoulder at the superglued locker, and then he grins a bright, satisfied smile and shoos them down the corridor with his hands.

  


“I can’t believe that was your first time running,” Frank says around the rim of his beer.

“That was craaazy,” Adam says before Tommy can. He’s practically bouncing around on the basement’s ratty couch. “That was so amazing, you guys have no idea.”

“I’m pretty sure they were, you know, there,” Tommy says, but he’s grinning, because Adam’s right. It was insane. Tommy’s still flying high almost a week later.

“Yeah, but they do that every time,” Adam tells him, elbowing him in the side. “Dude, I’ve never been outside during a moon before. I can’t wait to do that again.”

“You will,” Frank assures him. “We’re not letting you wallow away in that dungeon up there anymore. Those days are over.”

“You’re gonna keep springing us?” Adam asks, grinning. His smile is a mile wide.

Frank nods seriously. “Until somebody stops us.”

“You’re insane,” Adam says, but he sounds delighted, and Frank grins.

“Certifiable,” he says.

“A doctor actually certified him,” Gerard adds, dry.

Honestly, Tommy wouldn’t be all that surprised. He tries to grin at Frank, but Frank’s not exactly grinning back. The expression’s there, sure, but something’s off.

“Hey,” Mikey says, distracting him by knocking a knee into Tommy’s. “Felt different, didn’t it?”

And that easily, all the overflow of feelings from the other day is back, making Tommy’s heart thrum in his chest. “It was incredible,” he says. “I’ve never remembered anything after the shift. Do you-” He chokes on his own spit in his excitement, has to pause and take a deep breath. “Do you guys like, remember it all?”

“Not _all_ of it,” Mikey says. “There’s still a couple of hours that go missing sometimes. But most of it, usually, yeah.”

“You can train yourself to,” Frank adds. “We’ve both gotten better at it with time.”

Mikey nods. “And you guys have like, zero training whatsoever.”

“Training,” Tommy echoes. Well, sure. It’s not like he isn’t going to be stuck doing this every full moon for the rest of his life.

Frank cuts him a quick glance but then looks away, and then Gerard starts talking about how he kind of wants to know what shifting’s like – no disrespect or anything, just curiosity – and Mikey throws in something about Gerard’s drawings and how they kind of capture the feeling, and Adam’s practically wagging his tail in excitement when he asks to see them.

“They’re not, I mean,” Gerard says, but he’s already getting to his feet. “They’re upstairs, in my room.”

Adam bounds to his feet, shifting in place like a toddler who needs to pee, but Tommy kind of gets it. He’d probably want to see too if he wasn’t getting this bizarro vibe from Frank.

“You wanna come?” Gerard asks, Adam wide-eyed at his side, but Tommy shakes his head.

He lifts his beer can. “I’m good,” he says.

“Okay,” Gerard says. He shrugs and struts out the door, Mikey and Adam in his wake, leaving Tommy and Frank sitting there in silence.

“You can stop looking at me like that,” Tommy says after a while. “Anytime now, seriously.”

Frank shakes his head. “I can’t believe you let them do that to you,” he says.

“I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?” Tommy bites out. “It’s the fucking law, and it’s not like Clarkenwell is all that different from California, in that respect.”

“Oh, please,” Frank says. “You can’t tell me your parents locked you in a fucking dungeon every moon before you got here.”

“There are places around town you can go,” Tommy says. “Safety houses.”

“Prisons,” Frank says.

“Safety houses,” Tommy insists. “They’re to protect people.” He can’t help scowling. Yeah, those places had sucked, and Tommy hated them. But that was when everything was still new, when the shift itself was still terrifying, and at least the rooms were warm and comfortable and nobody watched him take his clothes off.

“To protect gene-free America.” Frank rolls his eyes. “Don’t try to tell me those fucking lock-ups are there to protect wolves.”

“And what’s so wrong with protecting gene-free America, huh?” Tommy spits. “What’s so wrong with making sure we don’t hurt anybody?”

“If they left us to shift in peace, we _wouldn’t_ hurt anybody,” Frank hisses back at him. “Places like Clarkenwell are a disgrace to our kind, Tommy. I can’t believe you’re defending them.”

“You know that’s how I fucking got bit, right?” Tommy cuts in. “Because of some wolf running wild?”

Frank opens his mouth, jaw tight, but then he catches sight of Tommy’s expression and snaps it shut again. He looks down at his hands, but it isn’t in embarrassment or shame or anything. Tommy’s getting the feeling Frank doesn’t do shame.

“I’m gonna go upstairs,” Frank finally grits out, and then he gets up and walks away.

“Fuck,” Tommy murmurs, letting his head fall back against the backrest, and closes his eyes.

  


They never talk about it. Maybe that’s not the healthiest approach to the issue, but Tommy’s certainly not going to be the one to initiate a conversation about his feelings, and definitely not with Frank. So he just pretends like nothing happens and Frank does the same and after a while their forced easy interactions melt back into the real thing, easy and light and completely immature, and Tommy loves it. He really fucking loves it.

  


Tommy heads for the fridge the minute he gets into the basement. Adam, with his complete and utter lack of a survival instinct, trails after him uncertainly, not even getting the memo when the handle creaks alarmingly in Tommy’s hand.

There’s only two beers left; two beers and a bottle of vodka and a half-empty jar of hotdogs. Tommy takes the beer anyway. Whatever, he’ll leave a fiver on the table or something. They can always buy more, or like, most of them can. Tommy’s legally alcohol-free for another three years.

“Hey now,” Gerard says, pushing a half-open sketchbook off his chest.

Frank surfaces behind the couch, cobwebs in his hair and a couple of playing cards in his hands. “Hi guys,” he says. “Wanna play Uno? Loser has to do a grocery run.”

Adam grins, drifting closer to the couches and the pile of battered cards on the coffee table.

Gerard nods. He looks like he’d been asleep, or at least drifting in and out, for a while. “Mikey’s coming home soon,” he says. “And he said he’d kill us if we were still out of milk then.” He flattens his mouth into an I’m-not-scared line. “He can be kinda mean when he wants to be.”

Tommy has a hard time imagining Mikey as anything but carelessly agreeable, but he shrugs anyway. The beer can is crumpling in his grip, so he sets it down on the fridge before anyone notices.

Adam sits down on not-Gerard’s-couch and starts pushing the sticky cards into a somewhat orderly pile.

Gerard sits up and pats the cushion next to him. “Come sit,” he says to Tommy. “I’d make a comment about not biting, but that’s probably inappropriate, huh?”

Tommy shrugs again, perches on the edge of the seat. Adam tries to catch his eye but he turns his head away, too slowly to miss the look that passes between Gerard and Frank.

“You know what he needs?” Gerard asks Adam, nodding his head at Tommy.

Adam shakes his head. “What?”

“Tickles,” Gerard says, throwing himself across the couch, the quick movement startling Tommy almost as badly as the sharp fingernails digging into his ribs.

Tommy jerks away. “Stop it,” he snarls, and Gerard draws back with wide eyes.

“What the fuck,” Frank says. He pats himself down for his cigarettes and pushes the entire pack into Tommy’s hands. “Go smoke it off.” He points at the door. “Go.”

Tommy slinks out the door, trying not to feel too much like a little kid being sent to his room. He hates feeling stupid. And it totally is stupid, what he’s doing, but it’s not like he can just turn it off.

It wasn’t even anything big, really. Just Mrs. Mackenzie making some off-hand comment how werewolf history ought to be taught in their bio class, not hers, considering they’re, you know, animals, and then almost making Tommy leave the room when he disagreed, and then Adam saying “You sure know how to get yourself in trouble, Tommy,” and he’s had to physically unclench his hands several times on the walk over.

Just, since when is this _his_ fault? Any of it?

He smokes the first cigarette too fast, feeling his lungs ache with the intensity even though his jitters are still there. He’s eyeing the pack, debating whether he should risk incurring Frank’s wrath by having another or just sucking it up and going back inside, when the front door opens and Adam eases onto the porch.

Tommy manages not to roll his eyes, but it’s a close call.

Adam gives him a little wave. “Hey,” he says uncertainly.

Tommy lights a second cigarette, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t.

“Seriously, what is _up_ with you?” Tommy asks, once he can’t stand it anymore. “You’ve been acting like a weirdo all day.”

Adam scoffs a bit, like he’s thinking _Oh,_ I’ve _been acting like a weirdo_ , and Tommy really can’t fault him for that, but he’s just mad enough to tell his conscience to fuck off.

“It’s not funny,” he says, “and I’m not in the fucking mood for games. So tell me whatever you came out here to tell me or leave me alone.”

“Seriously?” Adam asks, looking like he’s about to roll his eyes, but Tommy flashes a look at him, sharp and a bit mean, and he sets his jaw instead.

“God, you’re such a dick around these people, sometimes,” he says.

“I don’t act different here,” Tommy says. That’s a lie, kind of, but Adam’s still wrong. Tommy’s lighter, here. More like himself.

“Uh, _yeah_ you do,” Adam says. “You act like you’re one of them, like we’re like them, but an act is all it is.”

“What are you talking about,” Tommy says, voice flat.

“You know what I’m talking about.” Adam’s gaze is sharp. “Tommy. We don’t belong here and you know it.”

“Fuck you,” Tommy says. He doesn’t mean to, it just slips over his tongue, but he has absolutely no desire to take it back. “Fuck. You.”

Adam flinches. He looks miserable now, and Tommy should maybe stop talking before he fucks everything up beyond repair, but he doesn’t.

“Maybe you’re posing around, but I’m not,” Tommy says. It’s like watching a replay of a soccer goal or something: He knows the words are coming, but he can’t do anything to stop them. “This is my _life_ , okay, and maybe you’re too much brainwashed middle-class to see what the fuck’s going on here, but I need this, okay, I need it, and if you’re just here to rain on my parade, then you can damn well fuck off.”

“Tommy,” Adam says. He lifts a hand, hovers it awkwardly just shy of Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy can’t help but step back, slide away from the touch.

“Seriously, Adam. Just fuck off, please?”

Adam stares at him, eyes big and wet, and then he nods and goes inside and comes back a minute later with his shoes on, laces untied on one of them, and shuffles down the garden path and down the road and out of sight.

Tommy bites his lip. He’s tempted, really tempted, to run after Adam and apologize, but it wouldn’t change anything, would it? Tommy would still be annoyed, and Adam would be able to tell, and then they’d just have another awkward conversation and end up right where they started anyway. No. It’s better this way.

So he doesn’t run after him. Instead, he sits down on the porch and slides his legs through the gaps in the railing and lights up a cigarette.

“He do something to deserve that?” Frank asks.

When Tommy glances over his shoulder, Frank’s leaning against the porch door, arms crossed in front of his chest. His face is all in shadow, and his voice is completely neutral, and Tommy has no clue if he’s pissed or not.

“Yes!” he says, turning back to his cigarette before he looks back over his shoulder. “No. I don’t know.”

Frank smirks humorlessly. “No wonder the poor kid’s all confused,” he says.

Tommy doesn’t mutter to himself, but it’s a near thing. He doesn’t get why it’s always Adam that gets the sympathy. Or maybe he does, because he’s a giant sucker for those big, dark eyes himself, but he can’t deny that it can get really, really annoying at times. Or, like, all the time. And Adam doesn’t even _know_ , is the thing – he doesn’t even get it, he just waltzes through life and everybody falls in love with his Bambi eyes and then everything’s fine.

“Sometimes he just pisses me off,” Tommy murmurs.

“So does Gee, sometimes.” Frank sways on his heels. “Doesn’t mean I go around breaking his fucking heart.”

“Oh, like you’ve never made him look at you with those teary eyes,” Tommy snaps, and then clenches his hands and breathes really hard because it’s not Frank he’s pissed at, it’s _not_ , and he’s already done enough damage for one night.

“Just, I don’t know.” He rests his forehead against the sleeve of his shirt. “It just gets to me, I guess. The way he just rolls over and takes it. Like, there’s no fight in him. Not in him, or freaking Maria, or Ryan, or any of the kids at school. They all just sit and beg and roll over like they’re not secretly dying inside.”

“Maybe it’s ‘cause they don’t know any better,” Frank says. He plops down next to Tommy and sticks his legs through the railing. “You ever think about that?”

“They’re not five-year-olds, Frank,” Tommy sighs. “They fucking know better.”

Frank shakes his head. Tommy has a feeling it’s at him, not what he said. “You know something like 70 per cent of wolves are bred true, right?”

Tommy knows – he’s doing the module on it, isn’t he – but he has no idea where Frank’s going with that, so he just gives him a blank look. “So?”

“So,” Frank says, flipping open Tommy’s pack of cigarettes, “they have no idea what it’s like to not be treated like shit. There’s so many security systems in place now, and like, bite-proof clothes and shit, so unless you get the short end of the stick like you and Mikey, you’re either human or you’re wolf. People don’t cross over like they used to.”

He flicks on Tommy’s lighter, metal crackling, and lifts it to his mouth.

Tommy rubs his sleeve over his forehead. “Will you just get to the damn point already?”

Frank drops the lighter in Tommy’s lap. “What I’m saying, you smart-ass, is that maybe they don’t know that they can fight the system. Hey, I got lucky with my folks, but you said Adam’s been raised believing he’s inferior. And maybe it bugs him, but that doesn’t mean that somewhere, deep down, he doesn’t believe it. And the other kids at your school, they’re not exactly the social elite, are they – they’re from shit backgrounds, they have issues coming out their ears, and being a wolf is just one more factor in all the reasons they’re worth less than everyone else.”

Tommy blinks at him for a moment, breath caught in his throat, before he shakes his head and manages a shaky grin. “Man, when’d you get so deep?”

Frank stares at him. Then he laughs. “It’s a side effect of hanging out with Gerard,” he says. “Occupational hazard.”

“I can see how that would happen,” Tommy admits. He rubs at his forehead again. “I just,” he murmurs. “I just don’t think I can take it a whole lot longer, you know?”

“You won’t have to,” Frank says, utterly self-assured. “We’re on the brink of revolution, anyway.”

Tommy scoffs.

“Seriously.” Frank takes Tommy’s cigarette from his fingers and takes a long drag. He waves his hand, casually, like it isn’t a big deal. “We’re on the brink of something huge. Maybe those fuckers at that school of yours don’t want you to know that, but we are. New York City, there are riots every night. In Portland, three people died during protests after a werewolf got elected onto the city council, but she’s still on it and holding her fucking own. Even the Heartland’s starting to turn sympathetic. It’s fucking massive, this thing.”

Tommy takes a drag from his cigarette to hide the fact that he is, in fact, fucking speechless. “Why don’t I know about any of this?” he asks, and Frank rolls his eyes, and then Tommy rolls his eyes, because yeah, he knows, but what he’s really asking is why aren’t people shouting it from the fucking rooftops?

“Because they’re scared,” Frank says, when he asks. “The humans are scared they’ll get lynched by the freaking oppressed and the wolves are scared they’ll get their heads bashed in, and really, it’s not like you’re announcing to your dictator principal that you’re breaking her rules every other night.”

“It’s not that often,” Tommy mutters, for lack of anything better to say.

Frank scoffs and doesn’t say anything.

“Okay, fine.” Tommy cuts him a glance. “I’m gonna go and like, apologize. Tomorrow. Okay?”

“Peachy,” Frank says, straight-faced.

Tommy figures that’s as good as it’s gonna get.

  


Tommy doesn’t see Adam in the corridors or at lunch, and he thinks for a panicky second that maybe Adam got caught sneaking back in and like, freaking expelled, before he reminds himself that there was no way he would have missed the rumors. Instead he asks Freddie, the guy Adam has Physics with third period, and Freddie says Adam has an appointment with his guidance counselor.

Which, man. Adam hates his guidance counselor, or maybe the counselor hates Adam. Either way Adam’s always a wreck afterwards. Tommy seriously couldn’t have picked a shittier time to blow up at him.

He twitches his fingers against his desk all the way through his last period and disappears before anybody can give him shit, heading straight for the dorms. He knocks on Adam’s door but nobody answers, which could mean something or it could not, so he goes back to his room and grabs a pen and a piece of paper. He slides a note under Adam’s door that just reads _music room 3_ and heads out to go exactly there, and get his hands on it if it’s free. The last thing he needs is Adam waltzing in on some picture-perfect Clarkenwell pair practicing Beethoven’s Duet with Two Obligato Eyeglasses, or something equally ridiculous and likely.

It’s free, though, and not even locked, and Tommy slips inside and pokes through the cabinets until he finds a guitar that he can fiddle with, tightening the tuning keys and running his fingers over the strings like Frank has taught him. He sits on the window sill and strums most of _Our Lady of Sorrows_ , making up part of chorus when he forgets the chord progressions, but that’s the only part he fucks up. If Adam were here, he thinks idly, he’d totally join in, and it’d sound fucking badass.

Of course it’s not actually Adam that finds him, though. When somebody finally sticks his head in the door, it’s a head that’s too small, too curly-haired, too dark, and Tommy tries not to roll his eyes at the way Ryan Ross hovers in the doorway like some sort of freaky daylight apparition.

“Are we allowed in here?” Ryan asks, eyes wide.

Tommy shrugs, going back to fiddling with the keys.

Ryan takes a shuffling step closer. “Seriously. I thought the music teachers come and yell at you if you’re here after hours.”

“Nobody’s come to kick me out yet,” Tommy says. He manages a chord that sounds mostly right. “So.” He forces an expectant smile onto his face. “Anything I can help you with?” he asks, clearly meaning _Get the fuck out_.

Ryan shuffles a tiny bit closer. “Can you play that?” he asks, gesturing vaguely at the instrument in Tommy’s hands.

“Little bit.” The smile comes easier this time. “A friend of mine taught me a couple things, and I’ve been practicing.”

“Um.” Ryan’s gaze darts around the room before landing on Tommy’s eyes again. “Can you – teach me?”  
Tommy feels his eyebrows twitch up. “You wanna learn to play the guitar?”

“Um.” Ryan looks down, crosses his arms. His entire face just seems to shut down. It’s kind of impressive. “Never mind. Just wanted to know what you were doing here.”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Tommy asks back, watching with interest when Ryan turns bright red.

“Uh, I write,” he mutters. “Like, I go sit in the North stairwell. ‘Cause, like, nobody’s ever up there after class is over, you know?”

“Sounds chill,” Tommy says idly.

“Yeah, it’s.” Ryan bites his lip. “I like it.”

“There’s something to be said for solitude,” Tommy says, half-quoting, he thinks, even if he doesn’t know what, and Ryan nods. His fingers twitch, too, like maybe he wants to run along and write that down. Which, guitar-related bonding aside, would actually be kind of awesome, so Tommy really wishes he’d give in to temptation and get the hell out already.

Ryan, though. Ryan just takes a step closer.

“Tommy?” Adam asks from the doorway. He’s curled up into himself, and he looks stupid, like a giant trying to hide behind a house or something. But he’s here, and even smiling carefully at Tommy and Ryan, and that’s the only thing that counts.

Tommy tilts his head meaningfully at the exit and Ryan scrams, shuffling around Adam as quickly as he can while Adam’s still taking up the entire doorway.

Once he’s gone, Adam takes a tiny step forward. “I got your message,” he tells the floor.

Tommy nods, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He plucks at a string and then stares down at his hands, because this is ridiculous, but he can’t help it. It just figures that now Adam’s here, Tommy can’t come up with a single thing to say.

“Hey,” he finally settles on.

“Hi,” Adam says slowly.

Tommy pats the open space next to him in invitation, and then shuffles away a little bit when Adam comes and sits down. Their knees brush and Tommy jerks, and Adam frowns, and this. This just isn’t going like Tommy planned _at all_.

He takes a deep breath, all geared up for some big apology, and then deflates again. He can’t think of anything to say that would explain away how big of a douchebag he can be. He’s been thinking about how to say it all day, and had always comforted his idea-free brain with the thought that it’d all come to him in the moment, but now the moment’s here and he’s as clueless as ever. Class act, Tommy. Fucking A.

Adam keeps fidgeting, unimpressed by Tommy’s mental rollercoaster. “You wanted to see me?” he finally says, like Tommy’s his damn teacher or something.

“I wanted to apologize,” Tommy corrects/explains.

“It’s okay,” Adam shrugs.

But Tommy shakes his head. “It’s not,” he says. “I shouldn’t ever do that to you, and you shouldn’t let me.”

“So now it’s my fault?” Adam asks, but he’s smiling a little.

Tommy shakes his head again, violently this time. “It’s never your fault,” he says. “Shit like that’s not ever your fault.”

“Okay,” Adam says quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Tommy says. Because sorry’s not enough, not by a long shot, but it’s the best he can do and Adam seems to get that, because he shakes his head gently and holds out his hand. Tommy folds his fingers between Adam’s, and Adam gives him his sweetest smile, and Tommy knows he’s forgiven.

They sit in silence for a while. Tommy has no idea what’s going on in Adam’s head, beyond the fact that Adam probably doesn’t hate him, so he nudges Adam’s side, and Adam smiles again but still doesn’t say anything for a long time.

“Does Ryan like you or something?” he finally asks.

“Seriously?” Tommy twists around to look at Adam’s pinking face. “First Daisy, now Ryan? Who’s next, Frank?”

Adam manages to smile through his embarrassment. “You have to admit that Frank has a pretty big soft spot for you. Like, the size of California.”

“Shut up,” Tommy mutters, feeling his own face heat up.

“And like, Ryan does spend half his time sort of creepily hovering around wherever you are, you’ve gotta admit that.”

“He does?”  
Adam stares at him for a minute. Then he bursts out laughing. “Man, Tommy,” he says, shaking his head in a fond, you’re-such-an-idiot kind of way. “I really have nothing to worry about with you, do I?”

“I keep telling you that,” Tommy mutters.

“I think I’m starting to get it,” Adam murmurs, hushed, and kisses the side of Tommy’s head.

Tommy turns red. Which is stupid, because it’s just Adam, and Tommy reaches for his guitar again to keep both of their minds off it. “Hey, so. I think I figured out how to play _Born to be Wild_ on this. Wanna sing it for me so I can check?”

  


Frank’s at it again when Tommy gets out of English.

Tommy doesn’t even notice him at first, preoccupied with digging for his Spanish workbook and simultaneously keeping an eye out for Adam, and it’s not until he hears some girl say “What are you doing at my locker?” that he looks up.

She’s taller than Frank is, glaring down at him, but from what Tommy can see, Frank’s still grinning happily when he offers her a flyer.

“The Mythology Club is having a recruitment meeting,” he says cheerfully.

She huffs. “Just… stay away from my locker, okay?” she says and stalks away.

“Bye now,” Frank calls after her. He rolls his eyes and digs a handful of crumpled folded up notes out of the pocket of the uniform slacks he’s wearing, pulling them apart and shaking his head after each one.

Tommy gets to his side just in time to catch the notes when they start to slip from his fingers. “Hey, Frank,” he says. “I see you still haven’t grown a brain.”

Frank unfolds another piece of paper, grin, refolds it and slips it through the slits into the huffy girl’s locker. “Come on,” he says airily. “Who needs a brain when you can have fun instead?”

Tommy unfolds one of the notes. It says _Jenny thinks you’re a slut_ in messy cursive. The next says _I know what test you cheated on_ , the one after that _he’s lying to you ~your secret friend_.

“You’re ridiculous,” Tommy says, even though he’s maybe, kind of impressed by the sheer size of Frank’s balls. “What if they haven’t cheated on a test, or don’t know any Jenny’s?”

“Then they won’t believe it,” Frank says, waving a dismissive hand. “But a couple of people _will_ believe it, or at least become paranoid enough that they’ll start to see evidence for it everywhere, and then there’ll be drama to end all dramas.” He grins. “People love drama, Tommy,” he says. “Seriously, give them an inch of a reason for it, and they’ll happily go the mile themselves, and drag all their friends along with them.”

“You’re crazy,” Tommy says. “Seriously fucking crazy.”

“I know,” Frank says happily. “Here, check out this flyer. Gerard drew it, isn’t it sick?”

It is, in more than one way – all it says is _Mythology Club Recruitment Meeting today!_ and the rest of the paper is covered in monsters tearing apart screaming men in old-fashioned armor and women in flowey dresses. Lovely.

“Gerard approves of your hobby?” Tommy asks.

“He doesn’t _dis_ approve,” Frank says. “Keep one, though. I kind of want to start a Mythology Club just so we can use this as our poster.”

“I think you kind of have to go here to start a club,” Tommy says absently. It really is a kick-ass picture.

“Yeah, yeah, spoilsport,” Frank says. “Wanna help?” He hands Tommy a couple of flyers and a handful of notes and starts across the hall, almost colliding with Marc who has to pull his gym bag out of the way at the last second to avoid bashing it into Frank’s head.

“Watch it, faggot,” he growls.

“You watch it, dickhead,” Frank says cheerfully, and when Marc turns, incredulous expression half-formed on his face, Frank’s fist flies forward and catches him right in the nose.

Marc doesn’t go down, exactly, but he bends nearly in half with both hands on his face, and Frank grins. He throws a quick wink in Tommy’s direction before he strolls away, all casual-like, and Tommy could have gone on staring forever if Adam hadn’t suddenly appeared next to him and tugged on his arm, whispering, “Come on, Tommy, we gotta go,” with the widest grin spreading over his face.

  


On the twenty-ninth, Tommy calls his mom from the phone in the common room after classes, patiently waiting while she congratulates him and gets all teary-eyed over his he’s eighteen now, all grown up, she can still remember when he was just– and so on. She asks him about his day, about his plans, and he can’t really tell her how Adam showed up at his door early in the morning, grin mischievous and a little shy, and how they ended up making out for so long they barely made it to their classrooms on time. He can’t tell her about how Frank and the guys put them on the guest list for their gig at Desecration Row tonight, which doesn’t mean a whole lot considering there’s not even an entry fee but it still feels kind of awesome. So he makes vague noises about hanging out with some friends, about the Depeche Mode shirt Adam had his family buy and mail over, and asks how things are in LA instead.

“Well, you know,” she says, without really saying anything. “Mrs. Thompson brought over a pie the other day, that was nice. And it’s nice to have your sister around more, now. It was a little bit lonely with the both of you gone, you know.”

“Lisa moved back home?’ Tommy asks, and he can tell by his mother’s silence that she hadn’t meant to let that slip. “Why? She was all over that apartment the last time I talked to her.”

“Well, yes,” his mother says. He can hear her shifting in her seat. “It was just getting a little expensive, you know. There’s no real reason for her to pay all that rent when she can just live here with me.”

“But what about her job at the kindergarten?” Tommy asks. “Mom? What about her job at the kindergarten.”

His mother sighs. “I don’t want you to worry about all that, Tommy. It’s your birthday, you should be enjoying yourself.”

“Did they fire her?” Tommy asks. His voice is probably getting uncomfortably loud, and he drops it when a couple of people wander down the hall, turns away from them to face the window. “Seriously, what the Hell, Mom? She loves it there. _They_ love _her_ there. That’s fucking ridiculous.”

“Don’t swear, Tommy,” his mother says, sighs. She sounds tired. “There’s nothing you can do, so don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Something happened, Mom,” Tommy insists. “Come on, tell me what happened.”

“Tommy,” she says, probably going for stern, but Tommy’s stubborn “Mom,” just has her sighing again.  
“Tommy, just let it go, please?”

“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Tommy asks. It’s all frighteningly clear all of a sudden. “They found out I’m a wolf, so they fired her.”

“Oh, honey, it’s not your fault.”

“Damn straight it’s not my fault,” Tommy bursts out. “They can’t do that, Mom, that’s illegal.”

Except it kind of is his fault, isn’t it? If he hadn’t been such an idiot at fifteen, his sister would still have her dream job and he wouldn’t be at this damn school and his mother wouldn’t sound like she’s forty-six going on ancient, God.

She’s quiet for a moment, long enough that he’s think they lost the connection if it weren’t for the sound of her breathing. Finally she takes a breath and says, “I just want you to have a good birthday, honey.”

And Tommy wants to say something snappy, something mean, something like, ‘how am I supposed to have a good birthday _now_ ,’ but she sounds so tired, and he’s so tired, so he just says “Yeah” and then doesn’t say anything for a while.

  


He’s still not exactly in a talkative mood when he meets up with Adam in the basement with Adam so they can head to the club together. Adam seems to pick up on that though, thankfully, and he stays mostly quiet, although he keeps darting quick glances over at Tommy when he thinks Tommy isn’t looking.

It’s not until they’re in the alley leading down to Desecration Row that he pulls Tommy aside and asks, voice hushed, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tommy says, with a wrangled smile he gives up on halfway through, and completely ignores Adam’s answering frown.

  


The guys are all waiting for them when they get into the supply closet posing as a dressing room, bursting into a surprisingly terrible rendition of the Birthday Song, and it’s enough to startle a laugh out of Tommy.

“Happy birthday, man,” they say, voices overlapping, and present him with a beer can with a burning candle stuck to the top.

“Thanks, guys,” Tommy says, managing a genuine smile. “This is awesome.”

Gerard immediately starts to tell him about all the difficulties they went through, finding an unopened can and then not drinking it until he got here, and Tommy nods along but he’s completely tuning him out. His mind keeps drifting back to Lisa, who he didn’t get to talk to because she’s working insane hours as a waitress to make a fraction of what she used to. Who had to leave her apartment to go back to living with their mother because she can’t afford her own rent. It makes him scowl, which makes Gerard falter in his story, so Tommy shows him his teeth and quickly says, “Uh-huh.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Frank pull Adam aside, frowning, and turns away before he has to see anything else. Okay, so he’s not exactly bad-ass company right now, but it’s his _birthday_ , okay, his eighteenth birthday, and Clarkenwell maybe doesn’t set the bar particularly high when it comes to that, but he really could have done without the free-of-charge reminders of how his one big moment of stupidity fucked up his entire life and the lives of just about everyone he cares about.

He can’t resist a second glance though, just in time to catch Frank sending Adam shuffling away with a hand smacked to his back before he comes over, pushes Gerard aside and slings his arm over Tommy’s shoulders. He has to push up onto the balls of his feet to do it.

“Why are you so fucking pissy?” he asks. No foreplay, just gets right down to it. “You’re like, eighteen now. You can get tattoos! Buy your own damn cigarettes and not steal mine. It’ll be great.”

“Whoop-di-doo,” Tommy says.

Frank pauses, grows still in that weird way of his that always makes Tommy feel like he’s being subjected to Superman’s X-ray vision. “Okay,” he says. “This isn’t just your regular old turning-ancient blues. What’s up?”

Tommy looks away, and Frank squeezes his shoulder. “Come on,” he says. “Tell Uncle Frankie what’s wrong.”

“My sister lost her job because of me,” Tommy says. Quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid, but it really doesn’t hurt any less.

Frank quiets again, but it’s an angry quiet this time, tense and furious. “Because you’re a wolf?” he asks.  
Tommy doesn’t even bother to nod.

“Fuck ‘em,” Frank says after a moment. “Seriously, fuck ‘em. I can’t wait for the revolution to mow those bastards down.”

“What fucking revolution?” Tommy asks bitterly, and then Ray’s pulling on Frank’s arm, saying, “We were due in stage thirty seconds ago, Frankie, Jesus Christ.”

They launch right into their first song as soon as Frank and Ray are in position, the kids in the front screaming in delight, and while Frank’s shredding with his usual enthusiasm, he keeps glancing Tommy’s way. When the last chords fade out, he takes off his guitar and leans it against an amp, ignoring the what-the-fuck looks the others are sending his way. The others minus Gerard, that is, who’s running through his usual welcome speech at the center mike.

He’s gotten as far as, “Hey everybody, we’re My Chem-“ when Frank’s suddenly right next to him, raising his voice to drown out the cheers.

“’Scuse me,” he says, ignoring Gerard’s wide-eyed look. “This is an unscheduled service announcement interrupting your current broadcast, because there’s somebody who needs to hear it.”

Somebody yells “I love you, Frankie!” but Frank just makes shushing gestures with his hands. A hush falls over the crowd eventually, and Frank pushes Gerard away from the mike before he plants his feet in front of it.

“I know you’re hopeless right now,” he says. “You’re so fucking terrified, trust me, I know. I can’t say I’ve been there, but I know where you’re coming from. I know how angry you are. I know how badly you want to hurt someone, just so you yourself will stop hurting.” He flicks his gaze downwards, at the rapt faces of the kids pushing against the stage, before he looks straight into the blinding lights. Tommy feels like he can see every single sweat drop bead along the line of Frank’s hair, even though he knows it’s just an illusion, but he’s so sure that he can almost taste the salty sting on his lips.

“You’re angry, and you’re scared,” Frank goes on. He fiddles with the stand for a moment. “But there’s one thing you’re not, and that’s alone.

“The world is full of kids like you.” He grabs the mike with both hands, and his words echo around the room, but the gaze he slants offstage is all for Tommy. “Kids just like you. Kids as lost and fucked up and angry as you. You’re angry, and you’re hurt, and you think you’re the only person in the world to feel that way, but guess what?”

The crowd roars at that, already anticipating what comes next, but Frank yells it out anyway. “You’re not!”

The yells only get louder, and Tommy feels his heart thump painfully in his chest.

“You’re not alone, you hear me? We know what you’re going through. We get it. We get it, and we’re here for you, and we’re going to change the fucking world for you.”

He turns, then, away from the audience to give Tommy his full attention and his biggest smirk. “Happy birthday, kid,” he says. “We got your back.”

  


When Tommy finally finds Frankie, he’s sitting on the roof of the van, drumming his heels against the rear doors and puffing smoke at the stars.

“Tommy!” he says, delighted. “Come on up, man.”

Tommy has to climb up over the hood and then balance across the slippery roof, which isn’t hard exactly but unfamiliar enough that it’s definitely out of his comfort zone, and he gratefully reaches for the cigarette when Frank hands it over.

Frank shoots him a look now and then, clearly pleased with himself, but he doesn’t say anything until Tommy’s smoked Frank’s cigarette down to the butt. Frank takes it from him and tosses it down onto the asphalt. Tommy shakes his head when Frank offers him another one, but when Frank sticks two between his lips, lights both, and then hands one off to Tommy, he takes it anyway.

“Fuck, man,” Tommy says eventually.

Frank grins, idly punches his shoulder. “I meant it, you know,” he says.

Tommy flops backwards, onto the van’s night-chilled roof, and stares up at the stars, so distant, so bright. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

  


The next night, Tommy sneaks out again, but he doesn’t sneak far. He finds their row of lockers, pausing to let his palm rest on the cool metal of the first one, and stares down the dark hallway. Then he digs the screw he liberated from the frame of his bed out of his pocket and sets to work.

  


Adam finds him in the boys’ washroom the next morning. Adam’s running late, as per usual – Tommy’s already showered and standing in front of the row of mirrors in his slacks and undershirt, shaving. He doesn’t startle when Adam practically bounces up next to him, though; he’s too used to watching for jocks that think it’s funny to make him cut himself by jumping out at him suddenly.

“Dude, it’s crazy!” Adam whisper-yells at him. “Have you heard yet?”

“Have I heard what.” Tommy lifts his chin, dragging the razor along the skin there, and meets Adam’s wide eyes in the mirror.

“Oh shit, you haven’t?” Adam makes bug eyes at him in the mirror.

“You gonna tell me what it is I’m supposed to have heard?” Tommy asks him.

“Like, with the lockers? Man, you’ve gotta see this, come on.” He pulls on Tommy’s arm. Tommy just barely manages to get the razor away from his skin.

“We should go to the guys’ tonight,” Adam declares, impatiently bouncing around while Tommy wipes cream from his half-shaved face. “They’ve so gotta hear about this.”

Tommy blinks at him, but Adam doesn’t seem to notice, and he barely gives Tommy time to snag his blazer and tie from the hook on the wall before he’s dragging him out the door.

  


“You guys are not gonna believe what happened,” Adam says before they’re even all the way into the basement.

Frank actually pauses his game. “What happened?” he asks. He twists around. “Dude, Tommy. What’s with the half-stubble?”

“Oh man.” Adam throws himself onto one of the couches. “Like, you know how you were pulling all of those pranks at school? Was that you? With the lockers?”

Frank blinks at him, and Adam shakes his head.

“Anyway, so, I guess last night somebody decided to copy you, or something, because-”

Tommy tunes out, here, digging around under the couch until he finds an unopened can of Coke that must have rolled there at some point in the last couple of days. He’d really rather have beer, but he also doesn’t want to draw to much attention to himself, and so he forces his attention back on Adam and a faint smile onto his face when it sounds like the story’s winding down.

“…and now, like, all the lockers have L’s on them and everybody’s freaking out, man, it’s crazy.”

“Fucking insane,” Ray agrees.

Gerard hums in reply, resting his chin on his fist, and then Frank gets Tommy a beer from the mini fridge, but neither of them actually says anything.

  


Tommy’s mom calls him one day and admits in a really roundabout way that they don’t have the money to fly Tommy home for Thanksgiving, and Tommy says it’s fine and not to worry, because what is he supposed to say, really? He manages to convince her he can go home with some friends of his, because he’s pretty sure Frank’s offer still stands, and by the time they hang up she no longer sounds like she’s about to cry.

“’Course,” is all Frank has to say on the matter.

Tommy grins, somewhat stupidly, and hides behind his beer. It’s not like it fixes anything – Frank’s awesome, and Tommy assumes his family is, too, but they’re not Tommy’s family. They won’t pretend to stab the turkey with manic grins before they start cutting it up, and they won’t hold a contest to see who can hang a spoon off the end of their nose the longest, and they won’t fight for the remote before the game starts. The thought of not being home for the holidays turns his stomach, especially because Adam’s going back, and sometimes he forgets that Tommy isn’t and starts to wax poetic about his mom and dad and brother and best friend back home and how amazing everything’s going to be.

But it’s not like going home is an option, apparently, so there’s nothing for Tommy to do but smile and remind himself that the other option is staying at school over the break. Which is just slightly more pleasant a thought than vacationing in Hell.

Nope, Tommy’d take Thanksgiving at Frank’s over Hell any day.

  


“Alright,” Larkner says, tapping the stack of papers in his hand with his finger. “This is your second test on Lycanthrophia, and coincidentally also your midterm. I trust I don’t need to remind anybody that it’s worth twenty-five percent of your grade for this term, but I do hope you’ve all been studying hard.”

One seat back and to the right, Tommy can hear Jesse scoff.

“Yeah, right,” he mutters, and Marc next to Tommy chokes on a laugh, but they both fall quiet when Larkner glares at them.

“No talking, no peeking, no notes,” he says. “And definitely no cheating. Trust me, you really don’t want something like that on your academic record, not unless your ultimate goal is to attend community college.”

He separates the top copy from the stack and lets it thud down on one of the desks in the front row. “Turn around on my mark _only_ ,” he says. “Good luck.”

Tommy’s not really the type to get nervous before tests, and he’s not this time either, not really. But usually his lack of panic is due to that low-level thrum of desire to not prove all the condescending bastards right. He still wants to do well, of course, for his mom and because failing tests always means mandatory tutoring that cuts into his bullshit-free time, but whenever he doesn’t, there’s a part of him that gloats at the fact that the poor little underprivileged wolf isn’t flourishing under Clarkenwell’s charity.

Today, though, today is different. Because Tommy knows this shit, this time. He knows it, and he actually kind of cares.

“Begin,” Larkner says.

There’s a rustle of paper when everybody flips their tests over, so Tommy does the same, and by the time he’s scanned the first couple of questions, his usual Zen has returned. There aren’t a whole lot of questions asking for an opinion – there never are, at Clarkenwell. Instead, it’s names and dates and freaking _legislature_ , and Tommy may not be the best at paying attention in class, but he’s spent hours talking this shit over with Frank and rereading the essays Mikey photocopied for him at the local library until the ink wore off at the creases. He’s got this.

Jesse, apparently, doesn’t take too long to catch onto the fact. They haven’t even been working for more than two minutes – so far, the questions have been the name of the first World War 1 battalion to include wolves, the number of human casualties in the first wolf riot in 1954, and the topic of the latest wolf-related bill that passed in congress; easy – when somebody hisses “Move your damn arm,” and when Tommy glances over his shoulder, Jesse’s glaring at him.

“Boys?” Larkner asks from the front. Tommy whips his head around, meets the teacher’s frown for a full second and then looks down at his paper. He knows Jesse well enough to know that he’s gonna get his ass kicked after class if he doesn’t comply, so he obediently slides his elbow off the table and into his lap.  
He’ll be damned if he’s gonna make this easy on the bastard, though.

The next question could be a or b – probably a though – so he clearly marks c for that one. The answer to question 7 is 1916, but that one’s obvious, so he crosses off the right one for that. Behind him, Jesse makes a pleased little noise, and Tommy presses his smile into the cuff of his blazer. He gleefully answers Budapest as the location of the first properly documented wolf at the time of his capture, and then flips the page slow and careful, giving Jesse plenty of time to catch up.

He finishes the test, Jesse copying his every answer, with quite a bit of time to spare, checking off December 19, 1976 as the date of President Carter’s first address on lycanthrophic integration with a confident swoop of his pencil. Then he turns back to the first page and sets about diligently going over his name until the lines are so dark they’re barely legible anymore.

Jesse holds out another couple of minutes, but as soon as Carlotta in the first row – she’s refusing to apply to anything but Ivy League schools – turns in her paper and heads for the door, he does the same. The second the door swings shut, Tommy frantically starts erasing all his answers and starts replacing them with the right ones. He still cuts it close, handing in the stack of paper with only two people left in the room and the eraser on his pencil worn down to a sad little nub, but whatever. It sounds crazy, but he’s starting to maybe get why Jesse and all those idiots like torturing them so much. There’s a sort of rush, a sense of sickly satisfaction at having screwed someone over and then gotten away with it. And yes, most of that is pure fucking pleasure at being the screwer for once, not the screwee, but it’s kind of amazing beyond that, too. No wonder Frank’s so keen on wreaking havoc all the damn time, if this is the way it makes him feel.

“What’s with you today?” Adam asks him at lunch, shooting a sidelong glance at the grin Tommy can’t quite manage to wipe off his face. “You’re all… smiley.”

“Just in a good mood,” Tommy shrugs, and ignores Adam’s choked-off little squeak when Tommy slides his hand between Adam’s thighs under the table.

  


The nice thing about being a social pariah is that Tommy is always one of the last to get picked for a team in P.E. – usually even after Fat Mike, whose stomach hangs over the elastic waistband of his gym shorts in a truly spectacular fashion. It’s great. There’s twenty-six people in his section, including him, so whenever they play soccer, four people get to sit on the bleachers and watch while everybody scurries around after some dumb checkered ball. Tommy loves that part. He gets to chill out with his fellow wolf Joey, far, far away from Fat Mike who refuses to even look at them. There’s a fourth member of their little slacker league, usually, ever-changing people who sort of hover awkwardly between the fat end of the bench and the wolf end of the bench, trying hard to not be associated with either and looking stupidly relieved whenever somebody comes over to switch.

Technically, there’s a third wolf in the class with them, but the guy in question, Sebastian Slaymeyer, is so stupidly talented at soccer that people pick him for their teams just because playing against him usually means losing. Sebastian tries out for the soccer team every year but, for some oh-so-mysterious reason, never makes the cut. He’s got the flu today though, apparently, so it’s just Tommy and Joey and Fat Mike glowering at everybody, and Joey’s a sweet guy who comes up with the best lines about their hardworking classmates and always shares his water with Tommy.

The not so great part about P.E. is that it’s Jesse’s free period, so him and his little gang come and stand on the far side of the field and glare and make threatening gestures that the coach pretends not to see.

“We’re not even _doing_ anything,” Joey says after a while. “What’s so fun about mocking somebody who’s not even doing anything worth mocking them for?”

Tommy shrugs, and then cheers obnoxiously loudly when Tony Michaels steals the ball and sprints for a goal. Tony startles and promptly loses the ball again, and turns to give Tommy the stink-eye.

Tommy smiles back beatifically.

“Is that even your team?” Joey asks after a minute.

Tommy shrugs. “I don’t think I’m actually on a team,” he says. “I’m pretty sure they’d rather play with one man down than with me.”

Mitchell Something-Hyphenated hits the goal post and gets some slaps on the back. Across the field, Jesse mimes idiotic cheering while his cronies laugh.

“They dare each other to go out during the moon, you know,” Joey says. He nods his chin at Jesse and his posse of sheep. “Sneak out into the woods and stay there.”

“Fucking dumb-asses,” Tommy mutters. It’s not that he gives a damn about the stupid shit they get up to, not when they don’t try to turn him into their entertainment, but he still wakes up at night, sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his skin, remembering the weight on his back and the sharp, stinging pain at the back of his neck. If Jesse’s really willing to risk that actually happening to him, he’s even more of an idiot than Tommy thought.

Joey raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, well,” he says. He carefully untwists the drawstring of his shorts. 

“They’re not the only ones getting up to that kind of shit, are they?”

Tommy cuts a quick glance at him, but Joey’s not looking at him anymore. “Oh,” he says finally.

Joey chews on his lip for a moment. “It’s dangerous, you know? That game you’re playing.”

Tommy somehow manages to smile through the adrenaline rushing through his system. “What game?” he asks, voice mostly wobble-free.

Joey gives him a look. “The thing is, I can’t even say I mind. Because I get it, I do, and sometimes I wish I had the balls you do.” He shakes his head. “And then I think you’re fucking idiots and gonna get yourself killed, and fuck everything up for the rest of us while you’re at it.”

They watch the ball make almost the entire length of the field twice before Tommy finally says, “We’re not trying to make life harder for anybody.”

“I know that,” Joey says. He smiles a little bit. “You could never be that much of a dick.”

“I’m not trying to be,” Tommy says. “But I can’t stop now. I don’t know if you understand that, but I know what it’s like now, what it can be like, and I can’t give it up anymore.”

Joey nods slowly. “Did you know that rats don’t start biting until after they’ve tasted meat for the first time?”

“So you’re calling me a rat,” Tommy says. He takes a sip of Joey’s water. “That’s great. Thanks for that.”

Joey laughs a little, but he catches Tommy’s eyes and nods once, and Tommy thinks he gets it.

  


Larkner keeps the stack of graded quizzes sitting on his desk in plain view until everybody’s fidgeting too hard to pay attention to him anymore before he relents and starts handing them out. Tommy’s practically drumming his feet against the floorboards, but it’s more anticipation than nerves. Larkner certainly isn’t helping any. He’s got the best poker face in the world, no lie, utterly straight-faced when he says, “97 %, Tommy, good job,” without so much as a twitch in his expression

Tommy replies with a quiet “Thank you,” dropping his gaze while he takes the papers. He can practically _feel_ Jesse gloating behind to him, and it takes a shitload of effort on Tommy’ part to not burst out laughing pre-emptively.

He still sneaks a look over when Larkner moves to Jesse’s desk, watches the smirk melt from his face when Larkner says, quietly, “Come see me after class, please.”

He presses his mouth into his shoulder to keep them from hearing him snicker. Not even the death glare Jesse shoots him when Larkner moves on can put a damper on his good mood. He can’t fucking wait to tell Frank.

  


Tommy gets his ass handed to him in a bathroom during break, alone with Jesse while two of his cronies guard the door. He’s still grinning when they leave him to spit blood into the sink.

So worth it.

  


Adam, unsurprisingly, doesn’t agree. His voice rises nearly a solid octave when he comes by Tommy’s room later in the day, like he’s never seen Tommy with a shiner, what the fuck.

“You should have seen his _face_ ,” Tommy says, batting at Adam’s hands. “Fucking amazing. You don’t even know.”

“I don’t wanna know,” Adam says. He barely gives Tommy’s hands a chance to drop away before he’s got his fingers on Tommy’s jaw again, turning his head sideways to inspect the damage. He bites his lip. “Maybe you should go see the nurse.”

Tommy draws back, moves his jaw a bit. It’s tender and puffy, and he definitely got some strange looks in his classes, but it doesn’t feel like it’s broken or anything. He’s fine.

“We should go see Frank,” he corrects. “Frank and the guys.”

“I’m sure Frank’ll be very proud,” Adam says tightly.

Tommy rolls his eyes. “What’s with the bitch face?” he asks. “I’m the one who got beat up, not you, remember?”

“Oh, I remember,” Adam says. “Doesn’t seem much like _you_ do, though, is all.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Tommy asks. His jaw feels tight when he scowls.

Adam’s bitch face is beyond epic. “You need to lay off, Tommy,” he says, his lips pinched into a thin, pale line. “I’m serious. You’re going to get yourself killed if you don’t lay off.”

“Just because _you’re_ scared,” Tommy says hotly, but Adam cuts him off with an angry movement.

“Yes, I’m scared,” he says. “And if you had any sense in your stupid head, you would be too.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Tommy says. His initial surge of anger’s mostly gone now, replaced by a cold, insistent rage. “You say smart, I say sheep.”

“Wanting to survive my high school years does not make me a sheep,” Adam full-on yells at him.

“No, letting douchebag strangers dictate your entire life makes you a sheep,” Tommy shouts back. Fuck this noise, seriously. Fuck it. “And it’s not even like you don’t fucking _know_ they’re doing it. You’re just too fucking scared to admit it.”

“Oh, save it, Tommy,” Adam says, face dark. “You really think I can’t tell when you’re terrified?”  
Tommy scoffs, but Adam keeps right on talking.

“You act like you’re so tough, like nothing can touch you, but deep down, you’re freaking out just as bad as the rest of us.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Tommy says. It’s stupid, is what it is, and he’s stupid, and he won’t let his stinging eyes turn into anything else, so he reaches up and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes as hard as he can’t stand it. “I’m not.”

“Oh, Tommy,” Adam says, voice going soft. “Tommy, come here.”

Tommy doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t, but he doesn’t resist when Adam takes his wrist and pulls him over to the bed. Adam glances over his shoulder as he sits on the edge and then scoots backwards, forcing Tommy to straddle his legs or break his hold. Tommy resists for a second before he chooses the former, but he won’t relax, staying up on his knees. He’s refusing to make contact, too, and Adam gives him a second before he sighs.

“Tommy,” he says. He lets his hands rest lightly on the backs of Tommy’s thighs. “I worry, you know,” he says. “That’s all.”

The way they’re sitting (or not-sitting), Tommy’s almost a full head taller than Adam, and he’s fully prepared to exploit that when he’s avoiding Adam’s searching look.

“You don’t have to yell at me,” he says.

Adam hesitates. “I was scared.”

And that, finally, is enough for Tommy to look away from the branches of the sycamore tree outside his window and meet his earnest expression. “I got beat up in a bathroom,” he says. “Okay? Nobody even knew where I was.” He chews on his lip, because that’s the best way he knows to keep his face from scrunching up and his nose from running. “You _really_ don’t have to yell at me right now.”

Adam’s hands move lightly over the fabric of Tommy’s slacks. “I shouldn’t have,” he says. “I know that. Okay?”

After a minute or two, Tommy lets his legs relax, settling into Adam’s lap and ducking his head into Adam’s neck when his arms come up around him.

“I’m sorry,” Adam whispers.

Tommy doesn’t nod, because that would look stupid, but he still manages a muffled ‘yeah.’ “I’m sorry, too,” he says, and Adam kisses his head and rocks him gently back and forth.

So it’s not like things are suddenly easy. But overall, yeah, life is pretty good.

  


And then one day Frankie peers at him, bleary-eyed and sweaty-haired, from where he’s huddled underneath a mountain of blankets on the couch, and says, “Hey, Tommy, you play guitar, right?” and all of a sudden Tommy’s playing a gig. He never actually agrees to play a gig – in fact, he says no quite a bit, but Frank runs his awesome idea of not cancelling the show they have on Friday night and just making Tommy play in Frank’s stead by the other guys, and they all seem to think it’s a brilliant idea.

Like, brilliantly stupid, but nobody really cares what Tommy has to say. Instead, they talk Adam into bugging him about practicing their songs every single minute until day of, which aren’t really a whole lot, and Tommy spends most of them locked up in the music room with Adam as a look-out because what Tommy really doesn’t need right now is for a teacher catching him playing non-approved music and giving him detention until the turn of the century.

And then they’re almost late to the gig itself because Tommy gets caught by a supervisor tiptoeing down the hall and has to lie about going to the bathroom and gets told off for his jeans and has to go skulk around his room for half an hour before the supervisor finally decides to wander away.

Tommy thinks it’s a sign, personally, but Adam just frog-marches him off school property and towards Desecration Row without mercy. Which, seriously. What the hell. Adam’s supposed to be the reluctant one.

  


The guys don’t seem to be particularly surprised that they’re late, which is insulting but at least they’re not yelling at him, which is reassuring until Ray pushes a guitar into Tommy’s hands and tells him to warm up while Adam goes to check out the crowd. Which he does, because he’s totally a professional, or whatever. It’s not like he wants to fuck this up. But then he’s all done with his exercises and with running through the songs at twice their usual speed and he paces around the dressing room until Mikey and Ray both excuse themselves with some bullshit reason about checking the stage set-up or getting something from somebody or some shit like that.

It’s not like Tommy doesn’t know he’s freaking everybody out, but it’s not like he can _help_ it.

“Dude,” Gerard finally says, peering at him over the top of some Superman comic. “Will you chill out, _please_? It’s gonna be fine.”

“You don’t know that.” Tommy swerves around and starts pacing the other way. “What if somebody recognizes me?” he protests, not for the first time.

“Then they’d actually have to admit to being here before they can get you in trouble,” Gerard says. It actually is the first time Gerard has deemed Tommy’s plaintive objections worthy of a reply. Maybe that means Tommy actually _looks_ like he’s freaking out now, instead of just feeling like it.

Apparently he does, because Gerard leans over to give him a lazy push towards the bathroom. “Seriously,” he says. “Go splash some water on your face or puke or whatever. You’re paler than me, right now.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tommy croaks and stumbles away. He rubs his forehead and the back of his neck down with a wet paper towel and spits into the sink a couple of time, and then he clutches the porcelain with a white-knuckled grip and meets his own wide eyes in the mirror.

“I can’t do this,” Tommy whispers at his reflection. He hadn’t meant to say it – had meant to say, _I can do this_ , but now the words are out of his mouth once he can’t _not_ say them anymore.

_I can’t do this I can’t do this I can’t do this._

He almost jumps out of his skin when the door swings open, and Adam only takes one look at him before he’s by the sink, dropping the bag he’s carrying at his feet and running his hands over Tommy’s shoulders.

“Jesus, Tommy,” he mutters. “You look like you’re about to have a panic attack.”

Tommy shrugs, because he’s not so sure he isn’t.

Adam shakes his head. “Man, Tommy,” he says. “What are we going to do with you?”

“Not let me go on stage?” Tommy suggests, but the look Adam gives him suggests that that’s a completely ridiculous idea.

“Don’t be stupid,” Adam says. He bends down to pick up the bag. “You’re dying to go out there, and you know it.”

“Dying, yeah,” Tommy mutters. He nods at the bag. “What’s that?”

“What? Oh.” Adam puts it down on the counter and starts fumbling with the zipper. “Gerard actually suggested this to me,” he says. “’Cause you like his make-up, right, and you know how I’m always playing around with it.”

It still takes Tommy seeing the eyeliner in Adam’s hand for him to get it. “You wanna put make-up on me?” he asks.

Adam’s expression soothes into a smile. “Think of it as war paint,” he says. He pats the counter. “Come up here,” he says, “and let me work some magic.”

Tommy lets him, tries to follow Adam’s directions of “look up,” “mouth open,” “eyes closed” best he can. He twists his hands in the hem of his shirt to keep the rest of him still and Adam works quietly and doesn’t say anything when Tommy jumps at every bang and yell and crash coming from outside.

Finally he drags a thumb over Tommy’s cheekbone and eyes him critically, tilting his head to the side. After a moment, he grins. “I think I’m done,” he says. He drops the eyeliner into the case. “Go on, check it out.”

He takes a couple of steps back while Tommy slides off the counter and turns to face whatever Adam’s done to his face.

“So?” Adam asks after a while, when Tommy’s still staring. And he can’t quite seem to be able to stop staring, because holy shit. It’s pretty subtle overall, probably, not like, crazy swirls and color all over, but still. There’s dark eye shadow on his lids and thick liner around his eyes, and just a hint of gloss on his lips. It’s not much, really, but he still looks kind of. Otherwordly. Fey, if Tommy were the kind of person to describe himself like that.

“It’s okay?” Adam asks, shifting from one foot onto the other.

Tommy turns back around, away from his own reflection, and nods.

Adam clears his throat. “You’re gonna be fine,” he says. “You’ll see.”

Before he can think better of it, Tommy catches Adam’s wrist with his hand. “You’ll be there, right?” he asks.

Adam smiles, softly, letting Tommy draw him back in. “Front and center,” he promises. His lips on Tommy’s are soft and certain, utterly sure, and Tommy draws a deep breath into his lungs and thinks, _This is happening._

  


The gig itself passes in a blur of _oh shit oh shit oh shit_ and _this is actually happening, what the fuck_. He thinks he does okay, though, because Gerard and Mikey and Ray give him encouraging smiles every couple of verses and the crowd’s cheering rises in pitch when Tommy finally gets his bearing during the second-to-last song and dares to bang his head a little bit.

And then they’re walking off, and Mikey heads straight for the payphone backstage to tell Frank to chill the fuck out and everything’s fine, and Tommy stands there for a second, dazed and disoriented, and he has no idea if Adam was even there because he couldn’t see anything beyond his own two feet.  
It doesn’t matter though, because Adam is right in front of him, catching his elbows and drawing him in for a hug. “That was amazing,” he crows right in Tommy’s ear. “You’re so fucking amazing.”

Somebody claps a hand down on Tommy’s shoulder and he turns and it’s Gerard, grinning at him. Telling him he did really well, but Tommy’s still half-deaf from the crowd and the speakers and can barely hear him, everything cotton-wrapped and unreal.

Gerard grins bigger still and says something to Adam, who tightens his hold on Tommy and says something that might sound like, “Maybe I should just take him home,” but then somebody they don’t even _know_ crashes into them and yells, “After-par- _tay_!” and slings one arm over Tommy’s shoulder and hands him a bottle of vodka.

  


Tommy wakes up face down on somebody’s carpet, the short bristles leaving uncomfortable imprints in his cheek, with birds sitting outside. He finds a bathroom and retches for a bit, not entirely sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that everything stays down. There’s a sliver of grey-blue dawn visible through the milk glass window, and it takes Tommy a couple of minutes of staring out at it before he remembers that while it’s a Saturday and he doesn’t have a class to get to, it’ll still be impossible to sneak back onto school grounds once everybody starts wandering around, and there’s probably some game in the afternoon that they’re all morally obligated to attend.

Maybe he can find Joey and him and Tommy and Adam can all kick around at the top of the bleachers, looking just interested enough to keep the jocks and teachers off their backs.

He splashes cold water onto his face and rubs away the worst of the raccoon eyes his makeup has turned into, and then he goes to wake Adam who’s crashed out on the couch above Tommy’s make-shift bed, one hand hanging over the edge like he was reaching for Tommy in his sleep.

“Hey, Adam,” Tommy says oh-so-quietly. He curls his fingers around Adam’s shoulder. “Adam, wake up.”

Adam does, jerking upright with a quick intake of breath. He gets it faster than Tommy did, sleep-swollen eyes finding the window and the brightening sky behind it immediately before he falls back into the cushions with a heartfelt “Oh shit.”

They have to step over several conked out bodies in their search of the front door, and somebody even bats at Tommy’s ankle when he stumbles past, but they find a back porch eventually, and once they’ve picked their way past the rose bushes lining the side of the house, they even vaguely know where they are. There’s nobody around except for an overzealous kid delivering newspapers who gives them a suspicious look when he zooms by on his bike, and lots and lots of birds eager to express themselves.

After a minute, Adam finds Tommy’s hand with his. “I still can’t get over how kick-ass you are,” he says, grinning over at him.

It makes something warm blossom in Tommy’s chest, warm and comfortable, and he squeezes the fingers intertwined with his and lets that feeling carry him home.

  


"Hey, Tommy," someone hisses when Tommy’s at his locker during break, and it's Frank, grinning and waving at him from the guys' bathroom. "Get your ass over here, come on."

"You trying to lure me into some sketchy corner?" Tommy asks, once he's close enough. "I'm not that kind of girl, you know."

"You totally are." Frank pulls him closer by his collar. "Tell your boyfriend to get himself over here, or we’re leaving without him."

“Okay, okay, chill the fuck out,” Tommy mumbles. “Adam,” he hisses, and jerks his head at the bathroom door.

Adam’s got his hands full of books and his backpack open on the ground between his feet, but his eyes widen in recognition and he nods, and that’s all Tommy sees before Frank pulls him bodily into the tiled room.

“It’s like you’ve made it your life goal to get yourself killed,” Tommy says drolly. “What, the last time wasn’t enough?”

“The last time is never enough,” Frank says. “Except for that time I hooked up with a drag queen by mistake. I really don’t need to do that again.”

Tommy snickers, startled into laughter, and laughs even harder when Frank pulls a just-remembered face of displeasure. He doesn’t look back when the door swings open, trusting that Frank wouldn’t aim his wicked-pleased grin hello at just about anybody. And sure enough, a moment later, Adam’s arm settles around Tommy’s waist, a comforting, familiar feel by now, and Tommy feels his body lean back, trusting Adam to take his weight, almost without his input.

“You two.” Frank shakes his head. “Honestly.”

“Feeling better, then?” Adam asks over Tommy’s shoulder.

“Yeah, thank God.” Frank rolls his eyes. “I was ready to climb the freaking walls, man, I can’t wait to start fucking shit up.”

Adam presses a quick kiss behind Tommy’s ear. “Sounds like fun,” he says, mouth curving into a smile against Tommy’s skin.

Normally Tommy would worry, kind of, because this is Clarkenwell and they're not big on PDA in general and definitely not _gay_ PDA, but ever since he got on stage and rocked his fucking heart out in front of dozens of people, things have been different. He's been different, because he's not sure he really gives a shit anymore. Because seriously - what can they do to him now?

But Adam's been different, too. Less skittish, for one. More touchy-feely, too, even though Tommy's sure Adam double- and triple-checked the hallway before he came in and slipped his arms around Tommy. It's kind of nice, not having to be the daring one for once. Maybe Adam's taking over for a while before Tommy uses up all his daring-points.

And besides, Adam seems to be kind of into it now. "So what's your plan?" he asks Frank over Tommy's shoulder. "Plant any explosives in the girls' bathroom? Write 'fuck you' on the wall in blood? What?"

"Fuck you, I'm not a Satanist, you freak," Frank says, reaching up to push lightly at Adam's shoulder.

Adam doesn't even sway. "No, seriously," he says. "You have a plan, I know you do."

Frank's lips curl into a tiny little smile that just feels all the more evil for how cute it is. "Maybe," he says.

"And you're not gonna tell us?" Adam shakes his head. "Dick."

"It's for your own good," Frank says, drawing himself up to his full height. He's still not very tall. "If you aren't surprised when you find out, they're gonna think you knew about it."

"We did know about it," Tommy points out.

Frank pinches his side, ignoring Adam's dark glower when Tommy squirms away. "Think you were in on it, then, fine. I'm trying to protect you here, you jackass."

"You just like acting mysterious," Adam tells him. He runs a hand along Tommy's arm, over the fabric of his blazer, but doesn't try to draw him in again. He smiles, quick and sweet, and Tommy finds himself returning it before Frank makes gagging noises and rolls his eyes.

"Seriously, quit it," he says. "You're gonna make my balls fall off."

"You should get that looked at," Tommy tells him, swallowing down a smile.

“You should get your _face_ looked at,” Frank says. “Now scurry off to class, I’ll never forgive you if you fuck up my game.”

“So much love,” Adam grouses theatrically in Tommy’s ear, and then kisses the skin behind it before he follows Frank out the door.

The hallways are empty, now, only a minute or so left before the bell rings, and Frank waves cheerfully and almost walks straight into Larkner coming down a stairwell.

“Shouldn’t you be in class, young man?” Larkner asks, before Tommy’s even had time to work up a good panic.

Frank nods and clasps his hands together, looking so angelic Tommy wouldn’t be surprised if a halo popped up over his head. “Yes, sir,” he says. “I left my homework in my room, that’s all.”

“Go on and get it, then,” Larkner says, and Frank nods and mutters a quick “Yes, sir,” before he scampers off.

Larkner turns on Tommy and Adam next. “The same goes for you, Gentlemen,” he says.

“We’re going, sir,” Tommy says, snagging Adam’s sleeve. “Sorry, sir.”

“I’m keeping an eye on you boys,” Larkner calls after them, and they duck their heads and keep walking.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Adam murmurs with every breath. Tommy can’t help but agree.

  


Someone’s poured thick red food coloring into the fountain by the time third period lets out and it sort of oozes over the copper, from the chubby little angels’ cornucopias and out of the eyes of the crying maidens, and it looks kind of gruesome and really, really cool.

Of course, it also makes the administration go on a giant rampage to find the culprit. They interrogate everyone who’s even been in trouble, or suspected of being in trouble, or anyone who looks like they might be trouble. And all the wolves, of course, and Tommy has no idea how both he and Adam spend almost forty-five minutes swearing on God and their dead grandmas that they don’t know anything without anybody figuring out they’re lying. Adam’s so rattled afterwards that he refuses to go see the guys Friday _or_ Saturday, and Tommy doesn’t press very hard.

They still go Sunday, though, because the guys are playing this super-mini gig, just a couple of songs at somebody’s backyard barbeque, and it’s free food and free drinks and nice people even if they don’t know anybody, and Tommy kind of has to have a word with Frank, anyway.

He corners him next to the one lone apple tree in the yard, after about an hour, because Frank mingles with the speed and determination of a bouncy ball. The only reason he’s listening, Tommy suspects, is because his cheeks are bulging with veggie burger and he can’t actually interrupt Tommy with any sort of coherency.

“You can’t sneak into school anymore,” Tommy tells Frank. He hopes he sounds firm, not earnest (or, God forbid, pleading), but with the way Frank’s eyebrows rise high, he’s pretty sure he didn’t pull it off.

Frank swallows with determination. “You can’t tell me you suddenly grew a conscience,” he says. He runs a hand through his hair. “Man, you gotta nip that shit in the bud, man. It’ll grow like fucking fungus otherwise.”

“It’s not that.”

Frank rolls his eyes. “Man, don’t tell me you’re losing your fucking balls, okay? They’re the best part about you.”

“Fuck you,” Tommy says, but then he makes himself stop and swallow down his anger. “I got plenty of balls,” he says. “But if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re just making things harder on a whole lot of people who don’t deserve it, and I don’t care how much you like to fuck shit up, you’re gonna end up upsetting the wrong people.” He takes a deep breath. “And I won’t let you do that.”

“Fine,” Frank says. He frowns down at his burger. “Whatever, Tommy. You still want us to come by next full moon, or is that too much rebellion for you now, too?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Tommy says. “Yes, I want you to come by. I’m not a fucking pussy, so stop being a dick.”

“Classy,” Frank says, but he’s smiling a bit, and Tommy forces himself to return the expression.

  


In the days leading up to the full moon, Tommy has to remind himself several times that he did the right thing. Even when the jocks are giving everybody even more shit than usual, even when the faculty are watching all the wolves in their classes with beady little eyes, he did the right thing. He’s not showing his belly. He’s protecting people who need it.

And they do need it. Tommy’s not friends with all the wolves at his school, but he knows at least a first name for every single one of them, can point them out in the hallways, and they all look like shit. The usually chill Joey’s got a pinched expression around his eyes, and he’s always fiddling with something. Ryan’s freshman buddy keeps tugging on his hair, which is fucking gross when it’s at lunch, okay, and Norwell from Adam’s History class has his nails chewed off painfully far. Even Daisy, who’s pretty enough that even Tommy can appreciate it – even she’s got stern lines drawn around her mouth and into her forehead, and she’s a lot paler than the rapidly approaching New England winter would warrant.

Tommy sees her standing by her locker one afternoon and heads over, taking her gigantic – and fucking heavy – textbooks from her. She looks up, surprised, and he smiles.

“Hey there,” he says. “How’s things?”

“Good, good.” She tucks a lock of her behind her ear and rolls her eyes at herself. “You know, the usual brand of terrible.”

“Yeah, I hear ya.” Tommy grins. “You wanna come study with me and Adam?” he asks. “We’re gonna hang in the library with Ryan Ross. I think we’re friends now, or something. Ryan and that freshman of his.”

“Ian Crawford,” Daisy supplies. She smiles. “I’d love to, but I need to check on my chemistry experiment. So unless you wanna walk me over there…?”

“Yeah, why not,” Tommy shrugs, startling a laugh out of her.

“Oh, Tommy,” she says, fluttering her lashes. “Carrying my books, walking me to my classroom. What’s next, are you gonna give me your letterman jacket?”

“I don’t think so,” Tommy snickers. “You’re working on your chemistry experiment in your free time. I think I’m too intimidated by strong women to make this anything serious.”

Daisy rolls her eyes, smile still hovering in the corners of her mouth. “I like chemistry,” she says. “It’s so objective, you know? There’s no opinions involved. That copper sulfate crystal isn’t going to not grow just because of who you are or what you look like.”

“Or what you are,” Tommy adds, and she nods.

“Or that.”

They walk in silence for a bit before she clears her throat quietly. “So, you and Adam, you’re pretty good friends, yeah?”

“Yeah, we are,” Tommy says carefully, but she just smiles.

“That’s good,” she says. She squeezes his arm. “We need all the happiness we can get.”

Tommy looks away, feeling the blush crawl over his cheeks, and then stiffens when he sees who’s loitering up ahead in the hallway.

“Oh, great,” Daisy says. “It’s the goon squad.”

For a second, nobody moves, and Tommy weirdly, stupidly hopes that they’re going to leave them be for today. But then Jesse’s pushing off the wall, blocking the corridor with James and Marcus and that curly-haired silent buddy of theirs.

“Oh, fuck my life,” he mutters. He doesn’t think Jesse hears what he says, but he grins anyway.

“Well now, isn’t this cute,” he says, sugary-sweet.

And just… don’t they ever get _tired_ of this shit? Whack-a-Tommy can’t be the most popular game in town, seriously. “Fuck off, would you?” Tommy asks, just as Daisy’s fingers find his and squeeze.

Jesse pretends to think about it for a second. “Hhmm,” he says. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think at all,” Daisy says. Tommy kind of wants to applaud her for it.

Jesse’s face flits into a scowl before he forces it back into a beatific smile. “Down, girl,” he says. “Let the boys play.”

“Yeah, let’s play,” Tommy says, apparently catching Jesse completely off-guard, judging from his startled expression. “I really liked that game we played during the last soc test, that was fun.”

One of Jesse’s cronies growls, ironically, but Jesse motions for him to stay back with a flick of his wrist. “I’d think twice about that mouth of yours if I were you, Tommy,” he says. His smile is all nasty now. “Or what do you think the administration will say when they hear just who ruined their stupid fountain?”

Tommy has a total oh-shit moment where he imagines policemen knocking down the door to Ray’s uncle’s house and slamming Frank up against the nearest door before he realizes what Jesse’s _actually_ trying to tell him, and really, that alternative isn’t a whole lot better.

“I didn’t do it,” he says, too quickly.

“So?” Jesse waggles his eyebrows. “Who’s gonna take your word for it? After all, everybody knows you harbor, what did they call it? Oh yeah. _Destructive tendencies_.”

“Leave him alone,” Daisy hisses, but that, predictably, only garners laughter.

“Is your girlfriend going to protect you, Tommy-boy?” James asks.

“Fuck off,” Tommy says. He wraps his fingers around Daisy’s elbow, even though he knows that’s just going to give them more ammunition. “Come on,” he mutters to her. “Let’s just go.”

“Yeah, just go!” Jesse calls after them, hyena-laugh loud and obnoxious, but Tommy manages not to turn back and bash his face in through sheer strength of will.

“I can’t wait to get out of here,” Daisy whispers, barely loud enough to be heard over the sound of their feet slapping against the tile. “I can’t wait to show those douchebags what the real world is like.”

Tommy doesn’t say anything, because what is he supposed to say to that? But he kind of can’t wait for her to show them either.

  


Night of, Tommy’s practically clawing his way out of his dungeon on his own when Frank and Mikey finally show up. The wind whistling in from outside is freezing, but at least he can see a bit of sky from here, and catch the first glimpse of them when they finally creep up in thick windbreakers.

“Took you long enough,” he says, dancing from one foot to the other. “Come on, come on, that window’s not gonna open itself.”

“Yeah, I gotcha,” Frank says lazily. “Stand back, I don’t wanna kick your pretty little head in by accident.”

“Fuck you,” Tommy says but he obeys, lifting up his hands for Frank and Mikey to pull him up afterwards and trying not to scratch up his knees too badly on the bricks when they do.

“Fucking cold,” he mutters once he’s out, because fuck. And he’s naked. That’s gotta count as cruel and unusual punishment, or something.

“You got that right,” Frank says. He’s bouncing on his toes. “Let’s free lover boy and then let’s get the hell out of here, it’s too fucking nasty to be human in this.”

It doesn’t take long to get Adam out, not with Tommy and Frank and Mikey all helping, and he grins huge and pleased at them all before slinging an arm around Tommy’s shoulder. It’s probably the gayest thing Tommy’s ever done, hugging another naked guy, but, well. If the shoe fits.

“Alright!” Frank grins. “You guys ready to blow this popsicle stand?”

“You’re gonna have to bring us back really early,” Tommy cautions. “Everybody’s still pissed because of the fountain. I wouldn’t be surprised if they pulled some sneaky shit to catch somebody in the act.”

But Frank just shakes his head, expression unreadable. “We’re not gonna bring you back,” he says. “Not for a while, at least.”

Tommy figures he and Adam look about equally as intelligent right now.

“What do you mean?” Adam asks carefully.

“I mean,” Frank says, not unkindly, “that we’ve got shit planned for you two, and that plan entails not bringing you back until Sunday morning or so.” He smiles a little bit. “It’ll blow your mind, I promise.”

“Not come back?” Tommy asks faintly. His heart’s hammering triple-time already. His stomach twists into an elaborate pretzel at the thought of being caught, but there’s also a feeling like someone poured soda straight into his veins, bubbling and itching and hissing just below the surface. He wants out. Out of this school, out of this town, out of this fucking life, and if the only way out of here is a hitched ride in a ratty van with a bunch of wanna-be rock stars, then that’s okay, as long as Adam’s by his side.

“Adam,” he says, breathes really, and he knows it’s written all over his face, how much he wants this. He can’t help it. It’s like the guys are handing him the life he’s always dreamed of on a platter, and maybe it’s only for a day or two, and maybe they shouldn’t be agreeing to this, but Tommy’s not gonna be the one to say no.

Adam, though, Adam still might, and there’s no way Tommy can do this without Adam.

“Tommy,” Adam says, just as quietly. “Tommy, if we go with them, they’ll know we’ve been sneaking out. They’ll batten down the hatches.” He hesitates. “We might get expelled. Suspended for sure.”

He gnaws on his lip, frown cutting deep lines into his face, and Tommy just has to reach out and fit his palm against Adam’s cheek, watch him close his eyes and exhale into it.

“But don’t you think it’ll be worth it?”

  


Adam doesn’t even have to say anything – seeing him melt into Tommy’s touch is all the answer Tommy needs.

“Alright,” he says to Frank. “We’re in.”

“Damn straight you are,” Frank says, but he sounds pleased. “We gonna let the rest of these poor suckers out or what?”

Tommy looks at Adam, and Adam looks back, and Tommy nods. “We’re gonna ask them,” he tells Frank. “And if they say no, we’re gonna leave them be.”

“You’re no fun,” Frank mutters, but he does some sort of elaborate bow-slash-handtwirly gesture that he no doubt picked up from Gerard. “After you, then,” he says. “You do the honors.”

The room on Adam’s other side is Maria’s, Tommy finds when he peers inside, Adam’s hand sweaty but insistent in his. Maria looks terrified at the sight of them, and just cowers in the corner and shakes her head no no no when they ask her, so they move on to Ryan’s nameless freshman friend instead. He looks tempted for a moment, dithering, and then his gaze catches on Adam’s hand in Tommy’s and he backs away. Tommy thinks, _Suit yourself, asshole,_ and tugs Adam onwards, but Adam stops walking and eases his hand out of Tommy’s grip.

“This is gonna take forever this way,” he says. “And we gotta be outta here by moonrise. So how about you cover the end of this row with Frank and I’ll go ‘round the back with Mikey and ask everybody else there, and we’ll meet at the corner when we’re done?”

“Fine,” Tommy says, and waves him off. Frank goes with Adam though, for whatever reason, so Tommy’s trailed by Mikey when he stoops down in front of the next window.

The guy in that one, a fellow senior, flat-out tells Tommy he’s crazy, and Michael in the one after it keeps his mouth shut but he’s clearly thinking the same thing judging from the look on his face.

The room after that is Joey’s, apparently, and his eyes nearly bug out of his head when Tommy grins and waves.

“Tommy, what the hell?” He springs up from his perch by the door and comes to stand underneath the window. “Are you crazy? What are you doing?”

“Springing people,” Tommy says. He looks down the row of closed windows. “Or, well, trying to.” He crouches down in the soil. “You want out? I’m gonna go wander off with this guy,” he says, gesturing at Mikey, “but it’s amazing, I promise. Like nothing you’ve felt before.”

Joey shakes his head. “You go do, Tommy,” he says. “I’m not that brave.”

“Yes, you are,” Tommy insists.

“No, Tommy,” he says. “This is your thing, not mine.”

Tommy tries not to frown. It’s just, there are so many sheep at their school, even among the wolves, but Joey’s not one of them. He’s the kind of guy who’d want it, who’d love it, and Tommy’s almost sure he could talk him into it if he had the time. But he doesn’t have the time, he really doesn’t, and he knows he’s scowling when he grumbles, “Suit yourself.”

Joey smiles like he knows exactly what’s going on in Tommy’s head. “Just… leave the window open?” he asks, so quietly Tommy barely hears him.

“You got it,” Tommy says. He gets up and gives the window a few good kicks to mangle one of the hinges, enough for Joey to break it open on his own if he changes his mind.

He gets on his knees next to the window again. “It’s worth it, I promise,” he says, pleads maybe.

Joey reaches up and briefly covers Tommy’s hand with his own. “I’m gonna graduate from this fucking school, and I’m gonna go to some Ivy League place, and then I’m gonna tear down their institution from the inside out,” he says. “That’ll be worth it.” He hesitates. “Until then, I guess you’re gonna have to rebel for the both of us.”

“Will do,” Tommy says quietly, and Joey nods and takes a step back, wry smile disappearing into the darkness.

  


The last person in his row, sprawled in a Baywatch-esque pose on the freezing concrete floor, is Daisy. She’s got her eyes open and on him, wide and dark despite their blue color, and she smiles when Tommy waves.

“Hey,” Tommy whispers.

Daisy doesn’t say anything in return. She climbs to her feet instead, coming over to press her hands against the window, easing it open the extra inch or so that it still goes. “Hey,” she says, once that’s done, and leans against the wall to study him, arms crossed just below her bare boobs.

Tommy finds his gaze drifting downwards. He doesn’t mean to, but he can’t really help it – he doesn’t see naked girls very often, or naked anybody, really, considering him and Adam are moving at snail’s pace right now (the peeks he gets in at times like this don’t really count), and he just _looks_ , okay, he’s not trying to be a perv or insensitive or anything.

And besides, it’s not like she can’t see his junk hanging out, so they’re even.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she asks finally, evenly, and Tommy starts.

“Uh. We’re sneaking out. You can, too, if you want.”

“And leave all of this?” She lets her gaze wander over the bare walls. “What are you waiting for? Spring me already.”

They get the window all the way open and Tommy grabs one of her hands, Mikey the other and they haul her out, and then Mikey, eyes shifty, goes and waits by the corner of the building where Adam and Frank are shuffling around now, blowing on their hands to keep them warm.

“Charming guy,” Daisy says.

“He’s alright.” Tommy jerks his head at them. “I’m gonna go with them,” he says. “They’ve got something planned, apparently.”

“Going where?” Daisy asks.

Tommy glances over to the three of them, twitching impatiently but waiting for him, and gives her a grin. “No fucking clue,” he says. “Have a good night.”

Daisy grins back at him, sharp and startlingly vicious. “I think I will,” she says. “Take care of yourself, Tommy.”

She’s on the go before he has a chance to ask her what the hell that means, and then Frank’s gesturing for him to get a move on, and the sun’s almost down, and Tommy forgets about her entirely.

  


It’s different this time, being shifted, but no less amazing. What Tommy can remember of the last moon is overshadowed by a firm mantle of awe, of _I can’t believe I’ve never known about this_. It’s still mind-blowing the second time, but less overwhelmingly so. Instead, he lets himself fall into his instincts, marvels at what his body can do, the things he can see, hear, smell. Frank and Mikey – they’ve gotta be Frank and Mikey – are less indulgent this time, too – they keep urging him to run faster, farther, nipping at his heels whenever he dares to become distracted.

He come to in the middle of the shift this time, jolting from the first sign of a brightening sky to pink sunrise, gaze caught by his shrinking hands. He starts shivering a moment later, no longer protected by thick, coarse fur, and casts a helpless look around for something to warm himself up with that isn’t like, Adam.

Frank catches the gesture and grins, and he ducks behind a tree and pulls out a brimming backpack and a loose set of clothes. It still takes Tommy a minute to realize that they’re back where they’re started, same trees and everything, and hopefully one day he’ll have enough awareness when he’s shifted that he’ll be able to pay attention to shit like _where they are_. As it is, he’s pretty freaking impressed by Frank and Mikey for figuring out where the hell to lead them, but he’s going to take the non-fanboy route and keep his mouth shut this time.

Frank, unaware of Tommy’s whirling thoughts, hops into his boxers and starts pulling clothes out of the backpack, throwing them vaguely in their direction. “Put some shit on,” he says. “I’m getting sympathy-shrinkage.”

Tommy’s clothes actually fit pretty well, even if they’re a bit loose, but Adam’s look… kind of amazing. He think the clothes might be Ray’s, or at least he doesn’t know anybody else who’d be willing to donate clothes to this ridiculous little venture who’s even remotely Adam’s size, but just – they’re tight enough to accentuate without being ridiculous, and the shirt clings nicely across Adam’s shoulders.

“I hope you have shoes flying around,” Adam says, and Frank hesitates, then grins.

“We’ll get you some flip flops at a rest stop,” he says. He stuffs a few loose shirts into the backpack and trots through the trees after Mikeyway, who, as it turns out, apparently has the inner sense of direction of a bat or something equally badass – after maybe 20 minutes of walking and the minor detail of scaling the fence that marks the edge of Clarkenwell’s property, they emerge onto a minimart-blacktop setup, parking lot empty besides a once-white van sitting in the greying dawn light.

Mikey heads for it straight away, pulling open the back door and disappearing inside.

Adam hesitates, or maybe Tommy does – it doesn’t really matter, because they’re holding hands, have been holding hands for the entire way, and when one of them slows, so does the other.

Frank notices, of course, and he bows, complete with hand-flourish. “After you, gentlemen,” he says.

“You still haven’t told us where we’re going,” Adam says, shifting closer to Tommy.

“On an adventure.” Frank grins with all his teeth, which is seriously even less reassuring than when Gerard does it.

Adam rolls his eyes and crosses his arms in front of his chest, staring down at Frank, and yeah, okay – Frank is seriously a tiny dude. He makes up for it by being loud and obnoxious enough for three, but Adam’s going to be fucking impressive when his ego finally grows to match his body.

“An adventure to where,” he prompts. “And if you say ‘Oz,’ I’m gonna stuff you into your own guitar case.”

Frank grins, but he doesn’t say Oz. Instead, he pulls open the passenger door and climbs – like, actually climbs – onto the seat. “New York City, baby,” he says. “That’s where _we’re going_. But feel free to hang around this _fascinating_ parking lot instead.”

There’s nothing there, seriously, a 7-11 and an out-of-order public restroom, but Adam makes a show of looking around anyway. “It _is_ fascinating,” he says mock-earnestly.

Frank rolls his eyes. “Get the fuck in,” he says. “You didn’t get me anything for my birthday, so I’m cashing in now.”

“You didn’t get me shit for my birthday,” Tommy reminds him. It doesn’t keep him from reaching up and sliding open the van door.

“Fuck you, I held you a fucking speech in front of an entire crowd of people.” Frank reaches over to shove at his shoulder. “It fucking counts. Now get in and zip it.”

“Finally,” Ray says when they climb into the empty row behind the driver’s seat. “Are we good now? Can we go?”

“Yeah, man.” Frank pulls his door shut. “Pedal to the metal and all that shit.”

Tommy pretty much trips over a carton of Mountain Dew cans and a backpack and a whole bunch of other shit when Ray peels out of the parking lot, and they’re already blowing through a yellow light when he finally gets his ass into a seat. Adam steadies him with a hand on his elbow, gripping Frank’s headrest with the other. He catches Tommy’s eye when he’s sitting down safely too, just a glance, and Tommy looks around the van to distract both of them from the heat blooming across his cheeks.

Mikey and Gerard are in the last row, Gerard passed out and Mikey positively twitchy, tapping his boot against the speaker and his nails against the window sill. Tommy wonders if he feels the same way Tommy does, if he feels that buzz under his skin, that feeling of _alive alive more more more._ He’s probably going to crash soon, he can feel a bone-deep weariness creeping into his fingers, his toes, but for now he just wants to jitter all over the place.

He does, too. Ray glares at him in the rearview mirror twice before they even make it to the freeway. He tucks his hands between his thighs and stares outside, at the trees and cars flying by, and somehow he goes from feeling a mile high to startling awake again when he bumps his head against the window.

“Hey,” Adam says. He fits his hand around Tommy’s shoulder, tugging a little. “Come here.”

He undoes Tommy’s seatbelt first, then his own, and pulls the buckle out of the way and jams it between the two seat cushions. Then he reaches up and pulls Tommy down onto his chest, broad and soft. Tommy doesn’t even think about it when he cranes his neck to slot their lips together. Adam gets with the program soon enough, tongue slipping between Tommy’s lips, and Tommy hitches a breath and shifts closer.

“Aw, guys,” Ray protests, catching his eye in the rearview when Tommy looks. “Not in the van, come on.”

“Fuck off,” Adam says, so quietly probably only Tommy can hear it, but it makes him laugh nonetheless.

“Not in the van, fine,” he says. He trails his fingers over Adam’s chest. “We should probably get some sleep, huh?”

Adam nods. He tightens his arms around Tommy, shifts him so close he’s practically on top of him. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he whispers into Tommy’s hair, and Tommy would say it in return if he could just get his throat to work.

  


He jerks into consciousness when the van begins to slow, Adam’s arms still loose around his back. It’s murky out, but bright, probably around eleven or so, but Tommy really couldn’t say for sure. A quick look around tells him that they’re at a gas station, Ray popping open the door with his wallet in his hand. Both Mikey and Gerard are passed out now, Gerard’s hand on Mikey’s thigh, both of them with their heads propped against the backrest and their mouths open. Tommy’s kind of impressed they haven’t woken up yet. Even Adam’s together enough that he blinks warily at Tommy, eyes narrowed into tired slits.

Frank, though – Frank leans across the divide between front seat and their bench and pokes Adam in the shoulder hard enough that it probably hurts. “You, fucker,” he says. “Get up.”

“You want me to drive?” Tommy mumbles. He clears his throat, but his teeth still feel all gummed together and gross.

“Shut the fuck up,” Frank says, “and go back to sleep. I’m just gonna borrow Adam here for a bit.”

“Why?” Tommy asks, and Adam echoes it, “Why?” with big eyes and a sense of trepidation dawning on his expression.

Frank, unswayed, rolls his eyes. “You’ll find out soon enough,” he says. “Come on. Stop that groping and get your ass out there. You’re gonna kiss my feet in thanks when we’re through.”

Adam doesn’t look particularly reassured, but he does slide out from under Tommy and scoots away after one gentle brush of his hand against the back of Tommy’s head. The seat is nice and warm and Tommy rests his cheek against it, breathes in Adam and is out cold before he knows it.

The next time he wakes up it’s because the car door slams with enough of a rattle to wake the supervisors back in Clarkenwell. It’s just Frank, though, hanging across the passenger seat to dig through the detritus littering the floor of the van.

“Dude,” Tommy groans.

Frank shakes his head. “I’m heading back in a minute,” he says. “You’ll get your beauty sleep, don’t worry.”

“You gotta piss again?” Tommy mutters. Fucking figures. “What are you, five?”

Frank pauses in his groping to grin up at him. “You better watch your moaning, dude. You’re gonna love me forever if this works.”

“ _If_ it works?” Tommy asks, but Frank just holds up two cardboard boxes with a satisfied “a _ha_ ” and pops open his door. “Go back to sleep, dude,” he says, and slams the door shut behind him.

Tommy dozes off for another little bit and then he hangs around the van for a while, drinking a can of Pepsi he finds under the seat, but eventually curiosity (and his bladder) make him climb out and head for the restroom behind the minimart. It’s pretty crummy, as far as restrooms go, with dirty tiles and Sharpie all over the walls, but he forgets all about that when he sees Adam and Frank bent over the – cracked – sink, rinsing out Adam’s hair. Adam’s _black_ hair, holy shit.

Adam meets his eyes in the mirror, hair dripping all over his collar, and smiles carefully. “Yeah?”

Tommy takes a step closer, silent, and waits until Adam turns around, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. 

“How’s it look?” he asks, reaching up to tug on a lock of hair.

Tommy swallows, and then he gives Adam a look that has Adam swallowing, too, so he’s sure his approval came across.

Apparently it did, because Frank, who has like, no sense of propriety, or common decency, _seriously_ , looks from Adam to Tommy to Adam and claps his hands delightedly. “Excellent,” he crows. “Tommy, you’re next.”

  


Tommy can’t quite keep his fingers out of Adam’s hair. They seem to wander towards it of their own volition, creeping along the backrest and towards Adam’s shoulder even when Tommy’s staring out the window, watching mile markers go by. It’s not so bad, though, because Adam seems to have pretty much the same problem, hands always fiddling with Tommy’s new platinum-blond Mohawk, sliding through the leftover strands or scratching at his newly shaved skin.

“We’re so fucked,” Adam says finally, when they’re still 59 miles out of New York.

Tommy lets his head sink against the headrest and grins at him, loose and easy. “So worth it, though.”

Adam chuckles. His fingers slide behind Tommy’s ear. “So worth it.”

  


They make it to the venue in time with the setting sun. Mikey parks the van in a completely illegal back alley, right in front of the stage door, and he, Gerard and Ray head inside. Frank probably would have, too, but Tommy snags the back of his shirt and Adam blocks his escape route, draws himself up full-height and says, all deep-voiced and threatening, “Explain.”

It’s fucking hot, no two ways about it.

“We’re playing a gig,” Frank says, grinning wide.

“Like, My Chem?” Adam asks carefully. “’Cause all the gear was kind of a giveaway.”

“No, like, us. All of us.” Frank’s definitely bouncing now. “You guys are gonna open for us.”

“What?” Tommy asks, after a moment. Adam’s white, but he nods.

“You.” Frank pokes a finger into Tommy’s chest. “You on guitar, Adam on vocals. And then My Chem goes on and rocks the fucking house.”

They’re playing a gig. Like, him and Adam. It should probably feel overwhelming, terrifying, but it doesn’t. There’s a sharp jolt of nerves, but it’s the good kind, the _Bring it_ kind. Adam and him, they’re gonna blow this thing out of the water.

Tommy grins, and when he looks over, Adam’s smile is just as wide.

“Sounds like a good time,” he says. “As long as you’re aware we don’t actually have any gear.”

Frank waves him off. “Tommy can use my guitar,” he says. “Or Ray’s. You’ll be fine.”

“We don’t even have songs,” Tommy adds.

Frank grins at him, quick and wide. “You gonna let that stop you?” he asks, _dares_ , and Tommy finds himself smirking back.

“Bring it,” he says, nodding towards the van.

Frank grins wider still, saying something like “Fuck yeah,” on his way around the back, which is when Gerard comes back with a stocky guy with a kick-ass goatee.

“This is Monte,” he says. “He’s gonna help you guys out.”

“Hey, man,” Tommy says. He reaches for Monte’s hand. “Good to hear it.”

“Adam,” Adam says when it’s his turn to shake. “That’s Tommy.”

“Pleasure,” Monte says, smiling. “You boys got songs? Mikey said you’d mostly be doing covers, most likely, but if you’ve got anything original, we’re gonna need to run through it a couple of times so I can come up with a bass line.”

Tommy looks at Adam who says, “Covers. Our original stuff never really got beyond jam sessions in the guys’ basement.”

“Sweet, that makes things a bit easier,” Monte says. “You guys wanna write a set list? Nothing big, just five or six songs. And stick with the usual suspects, please – chances are high I won’t be a total pro at your favorite alternative indie rock band or whatever, and I think we all want this to go as smooth as can be.”

“You got it,” Adam assures him. He snags the hem of Tommy’s shirt. “Come on, Tommy, let’s figure this shit out.”

  


They sit in the van with a piece of paper and a pen while everybody else hauls the equipment inside, Adam on the middle bench with a roadmap on his lap for writing on, and Tommy facing him on the center console. Monte leans against the open door, smoking casually, and Tommy would totally bum one if he weren’t so keenly aware of the fact that he’s barely eighteen and rolled up without so much as a guitar, and Monte’s the kind of guy who can apparently make up bass lines to songs and then perform them on the spot.

Adam, the craving-free asshole, says, “We should do Kansas,” and writes that down underneath Queen and Bon Jovi.

“What about Nothing Else Matters?” Tommy asks. He rubs his hands together. “That sounded pretty good the last time we tried it, right?”

“Right,” Adam says. He writes it down. “We should do something slow, too. Monte, can Tommy have a cigarette?”

“Yeah, sure,” Monte says, digging one out of his pack, and Tommy reaches over blindly while attempting to hide his flaming face behind his newly-shorn hair.

“Thanks, man,” he mutters.

Monte hands him a lighter. “Do Smashing Pumpkins, if you can,” he says. “The kids here love them.”

Adam raises his eyebrows at Tommy. “ _Tonight, Tonight_?” he asks. “Or _Cherub Rock_?”

“ _Cherub Rock_ ,” Tommy says. He manages to smile at Monte. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, sure,” Monte says. He holds out his hand. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Adam’s hand finds Tommy’s while he reads, clammy and tight until Monte looks up and smiles a bit.

“One of the bartenders plays the drums,” he says, eyes flickering down their list. “He should know most of these, but if he doesn’t, we can just do acoustic sets for those instead.”

“Yeah, okay,” Adam says, reaching back for Tommy when Monte sets off for inside. He doesn’t slide their fingers together, though, just wraps his hand around Tommy’s wrist, and that should feel weird, maybe, but it doesn’t. Following the path Adam sets out on. It feels right.

  


The bartender who plays the drums turns out to be a scrawny guy called Isaac with a bandana around his forehead and a mouth full of sharp teeth, and the scar on the back of his neck when he turns to grab Monte a beer works wonders in getting Tommy to relax a little bit.

“Yeah, I can play these,” he says. He folds the paper between two fingers and holds it out for Adam to take. “Let me know when you’re about to go on. The bosses are already on my case about not feeding this lot,” he indicates the few kids already hanging around the venue, “enough beer.”

“Will do, man,” Monte says, rapping the bar twice with his knuckles before he turns away. “Alright,” he says. “Let’s do a sound check, and then we can go backstage and practice for a bit.”

“Sure,” Adam says, all forced lightness, but Tommy’s grin is totally real. New York City gig, what the fuck. As soon as he’s old enough, or has an ID that says he’s old enough, he’s gonna buy Frank a fucking _boatload_ of beer.

  


The venue, when they finally have a chance to look around, maybe isn’t huge but it’s still a damn sight bigger than Desecration Row. It’s a similar concrete bunker with a minimum of breakable stuff around (and what little there is, already well on the way to broken) and a well-stocked bar in the back, next to the sound board. There’s a huge backstage area, too, apparently. There are three different dressing rooms and separate bathrooms for guys and girls, not that there are a whole lot of girls hanging out. Tommy’s never felt particularly scrawny, but all the overly muscled, tattooed, angry-drunk guys kicking around are enough to give anybody a complex.

Thankfully, Monte steers them safely around those and into one of the dressing rooms, with two snot-green couches that smell like feet, packed high with My Chem gear. Adam goes straight for Gerard’s make-up bag, peering critically at the worn-down stub of eyeliner.

“You want make-up, Tommy?” he asks.

“I wanna find Frank,” Tommy says.

Adam nods in response, like he expected nothing different, so Tommy figures he might as well prove him right and goes.

It’s not hard, either, finding Frank, but he’s busy setting up the stage with Mikey and a couple of people Tommy’s never seen before but who they both seem to know well. Tommy kind of wants to go say hi, to share their easy camaraderie, but he doesn’t know anybody and he feels kind of stupid and out of his depth and in the end, he sits down on a speaker and drums his heels against it until Frank puts down whatever equipment he’s carrying and comes over. He rests his forearms on Tommy’s thighs.

“Hey there, hot stuff,” he says, grinning. “Where’s your singer?”

Tommy shrugs. “Dressing room, I think.”

Frank nods. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he says. “Listen, Tommy, not that I don’t like you hanging out and all, but you should probably go hang out with Adam for a bit.”

“Why?” Tommy asks, trying not to sound hurt. Because he isn’t. Whatever, he doesn’t give a fuck.

“Because he’s probably talking himself a panic attack,” Frank says patiently. “I know this is all an old hat for you now,” and he grins when Tommy rolls his eyes, “but Adam’s never done this before and he could probably really use your support. So, you know, go forth and bond, or whatever.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tommy says, sliding from the speaker, and trying not to grin too hard when Frank gives his ass an easy smack. “See you later, kid,” he says, and laughs when Tommy flips him the bird on his way out the door.

He spends a bit more time trying to retrace his steps than he’d like to admit, but he manages, and he’s grinning like an idiot when he finally eases open the right door. The expression slides off his face quickly enough, though, when he sees the way Adam’s frowning at his hands where he’s sitting on a chair, the way he doesn’t even notice when Tommy edges into the room and closes the door behind him.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

Adam looks up, smiles, too quick and too wide. “I’m fine,” he says. “You?”

“Fine,” Tommy echoes, but he’s still looking at Adam, and Adam doesn’t look fine. To be entirely honest, he looks like he’s freaking the fuck out.

“Hey,” Tommy says quietly. He picks up Gerard’s make-up bag. “Wanna do my face?”

Adam smiles slowly. “Okay,” he says, and pats the other stool with one hand. “Sit here.”

It’s not until later, when Adam’s stretching one of Tommy’s eyelids with his fingers, liner poised, that he meets Tommy’s open eye for a split second and mutters, “Thanks.”

  


“Here you are,” Gerard says, pushing open the door all the way. “We soundchecked our gear already, so you guys are good to go too.”

“We could have helped,” Adam says. There’s already tension creeping into his shoulders again. Not that he was ever not tense, but going crazy on Tommy’s face seemed to have at least a calming effect.

“Gee,” somebody says from behind Gerard, and then pushes forward, making him stumble into the room.

“Shit, Mikey,” he says, but Mikey just shrugs, heading for his bag.

“So, you guys ready?” Gerard asks. He rubs his hands together.

“Um, I guess?” Adam sends a help-seeking look at Tommy before he spreads his arms and turns in a slow circle, showing off his jeans and t-shirt and glittery make-up. “How do I look?”

“Hm.” Gerard puffs up his cheeks while he contemplates Adam. Then he snaps his fingers. “Here,” he says, and before either Tommy or Adam, from the looks of things, have time to process what’s going on, he comes over and tears a giant hole into the seam at Adam’s sleeve.

“I-what?” Adam stammers.

“You wanna play a rock show, you gotta be a rock star,” Gerard tells him patiently. “So let’s add a bit of rock’n’roll.”

“Tart her up,” Adam says, lips curling upwards, and Gerard smiles a bit but it’s nothing compared to the smile Tommy can feel spread over his own face. He moves forward, getting to work tearing off Adam’s other sleeve while Gerard finishes his, and Tommy leaves his hand on Adam’s arm afterwards.

“You’re gonna be amazing,” he tells him, when Gerard’s attention gets distracted by Mikey muttering something about his bass.

“You think so?” Adam asks, biting his lip, but it’s not coy. Tommy knows him well enough to know that this is all Adam, only Adam, and he smiles before he leans in for a kiss.

“I know so,” he says when he draws back, and then almost gags at how corny he’s become, but at least the tentative smile on Adam’s face is a good sign.

  


By the time they’re side stage, Tommy is sort of desperately tempted to remind Adam of the time when everybody forced Tommy into playing a gig and then acted like he was freaking out about nothing. He feels bad for Adam, of course he does, but it’s also kind of weirdly hilarious to watch him jitter all over the place, fiddling with equipment and pulling at his clothes and getting on the sound people’s nerves.

Tommy’s nervous, too, but he tries to counter Adam’s hyperactive bouncing by sitting down on an amp and just chilling the fuck out, occasionally reaching out to snag Adam’s shirt and force him to breathe for a second whenever he paces by.

“Five minutes, guys,” somebody says, possibly the owner of the place.

Adam goes completely white, like, dead-person white, but thank fuck for Monte who just grabs one of the kids loitering around backstage and tells him to go get Isaac from the bar.

“Holy shit,” Adam whispers, more to himself than anybody. He’s close enough for Tommy to grab hold of his shirt, so Tommy does, pulling Adam to stand between his thighs and winding his legs around Adam’s.

“Just… chill for a second, okay?” he whispers. “You’re an amazing singer. You’re gonna be fine.”

Adam exhales forcibly, hot breath washing over Tommy’s shoulder where his shirt has slipped off. His arms come up a second later, bands of heat against Tommy’s spine, and he lets his hands slip underneath Adam’s shirt and lightly squeezes his hips.

Behind Adam, Isaac makes his way through the chaos, retying his bandana and stealing a set of drum sticks from the guy My Chem’s having play for them tonight. He catches Tommy’s eye and nods once before he goes to stand by Monte. They whisper quietly, and Tommy’s pretty sure it’s about them but he’s just as certain that it’s nothing bad, and when Monte tilts his head towards the stage and says, “Showtime, boys,” Tommy’s got nothing but good feelings about it.

Even Adam’s not freaking out as badly, or maybe he’s just showing it less now, slipping into a performance persona that’s growing calmer and calmer with every step he takes towards the stage.

At the edge of the stage, where they can already see the people pressed up against the stage, waiting expectantly, Adam stops and turns around. “I’m about to play my first gig,” he says, tugging at one leg of the jeans he’s got on, “and I’m not even wearing my own pants.”

“Nobody gives a fuck,” Tommy says in reply and pushes him out into the spotlight.

Adam turns back to him, a betrayed ‘What the fuck’-look on his face, but Tommy’s right on his heels, heading over to stage right to a few raggedy cheers from the audience. Monte sets up on the other side, giving a sharp nod to Isaac settling behind the drums, and then to Adam.

 _Go for it_ , he mouths.

Adam takes a deep breath and steps up to the mike. “Hey,” he says. He clears his throat. “Hi, guys.”

Someone in the first couple of rows whistles, but nobody else seems to be paying much attention.

Adam turns a helpless look on Tommy, a clear ‘what now?’ and maybe a whole bunch of ‘help!’ And Tommy would love to, he really would, but this is something Adam has to do by himself. Tommy maybe could step in, or Gerard would – he’s probably itching to get out here right now – but if Adam doesn’t do this by himself, he’s never going to. And maybe Adam’s not as vocal about it as Tommy is, but Tommy’s starting to get the feeling that Adam won’t survive in this world they’ve been thrown in any better than Tommy would. Because Adam’s been taught to roll over and play dead his entire life, but he’s not that guy, and this is his one chance to make it, and Tommy won’t be the one to take that from him.

So instead he just smiles, and drags his fingers through his hair, reminding him, and Adam’s grimace turns into a smile of his own.

“I love you,” he says, words caught by the microphone, but before the audience – or Tommy, for that matter – has a chance to react, he tugs the mike out of its holder.

“Okay,” he tells the crowd. “You all need to shut the fuck up right now.”

There are a couple of disparaging jeers from the back, but most everyone seems to lapse into startled silence at his words.

“Thank you,” Adam says sweetly, just as somebody in the back yells, “Why?”

“That’s an excellent question, honey,” Adam says, even though the person in question was definitely male. He lifts a finger into the air.

“Why should you stop jabbering and pay attention? Because this is our world premiere, and it’s going to be amazing, and really, when we’re huge, you’re gonna want to remember this moment.”

“Okay, Mr. Big Talker,” one of the girls in the front calls. She’s got a nose ring that’s so big it’s legitimately a bit scary. “You talk, you gotta walk it.”

“Oh, I’m walking.” Adam winks at her before he whirls around. “ _Livin’ on a Prayer_. Isaac, count us off.”

It doesn’t take the crowd long to realize that Adam wasn’t just talking a big game. By the first chorus, everyone that Tommy can see underneath the glaring lights is yelling along, and by the last, Adam’s grin is so big it’d even put the Cheshire Cat to shame.

“Thank you,” Adam says over the last, fading chords. He bows slightly. “Our next song is _Carry On My Wayward Son,_ you might have heard of it.”

One of the girls in the front row has a bright pink boa wrapped around her neck – apparently that’s a Thing, with Gerard – and she tosses it onto the stage when Tommy strums the opening chords, yelling “That’s my favorite song!”

Adam – predictably – loves it. He winds the boa around his neck, struts across the stage with it, ties it around Tommy’s wrist and tugs. It’s ridiculous, and Tommy definitely misses a couple of chords, he’s laughing so hard, but he obediently shuffles after Adam and gets several delighted cheers from the girls in the front for his trouble.

“Give it up for Tommy,” Adam laughs, once the song ends, and Tommy gets a couple of cheers. The front in particular seems pretty enthusiastic.

He waggles his fingers and bobs his head, and then looks down at the guitar in his hands. This is weird. Kind of awkward, and really weird.

“Tommy’s shy,” Adam confides in his audience, grinning at Tommy when Tommy’s head pops up. “You guys wanna try to loosen him up a bit?”

More cheers. Tommy hides his face behind one hand before peering at Adam through his fingers. He’s still grinning though, so that’s a hit.

“So!” Adam says. “This originally wasn’t on the set list, but Tommy _loves_ Enter Sandman.” He looks back over his shoulder, making brief eye contact with Monte and Isaac who both nod. Tommy’s staring, but Adam doesn’t really seem to care. “Are you ready?”

They are, they definitely are, and Adam points at Tommy. “Let’s see if we can make him hit the floor!”

There are approving screams, and not just from the girls. Adam turns to Tommy and nods. “Take us away,” he says, and then he grins, slow and predatory and practically spelling out _mine_ with his eyes.

Tommy’s so caught up in staring that he almost fumbles his first chord. Because it’s one thing to know someone has potential, and something else entirely to watch it unfold before your very eyes.

Adam winks at him before he whirls back to the crowd. “Sing it with me now!”

And they do.

  


Tommy’s shirt is sweat-stained and gross, though not as bad as Adam’s, by the time he gets off stage, punch-drunk and giddy from the cheers and the blinding lights. That doesn’t stop Frank from jumping on his back, nearly flattening him, and it doesn’t stop Mikey from patting his shoulder or Gerard from beaming at him. Even Ray’s smiling, maybe.

“Fucking awesome,” Frank crows, pumping his fist into the air. “Adam, dude, give me some love.”

Adam rolls his eyes, but Tommy can totally see the smile he’s trying to hide when he high-fives Frank obediently. What a faker.

“Nice show, Adam,” Gerard says, and Adam seriously fucking _glows_. He just stands there and beams and beams until one of the venue people comes by to make everybody get ready for their set, and then he turns t Tommy with an almost manic expression.

“This,” he says. “I don’t care what it takes. This is what I’m doing for the rest of my life.”

  


They head for the pit while the guys play, and a couple of people recognize them and yell something about good sets, but mostly they’re left alone. And Tommy should be disappointed, maybe, but really he’s just reveling in the feeling of Adam’s arms around him, sweat-sticky skin against sweat-sticky skin, and the fact that nobody gives a shit that there are two baby punks grinding on each other in the middle of a mosh pit.

“We gonna show those prejudiced fuckers out there a good time or what?” Gerard hollers into the mic above them, and the roar he gets in return is staggering. Gerard points straight at Tommy and winks before he launches into _Teenagers_ , and Tommy smiles back and maybe even waves a little bit, because he’s a loser like that, before Adam leans in to nose at Tommy’s ear and Tommy forgets about the band entirely.

“I love you,” Adam whispers, inaudibly over the music, but Tommy can feel his lips move as they drag over the skin on his neck. He reaches up and winds his arms around Adam’s shoulders, shuddering all over, and Adam just grins, pleased and predatory, and hugs him tighter.

He’s so wrapped up in the moment, in Adam, that he doesn’t even notice Monte until the man’s hand settles on his shoulder.

“Come on!” he yells over the chords. “You don’t wanna be out here when the crowd really gets going, trust me.”

Tommy just blinks dumbly up at him, but then he sees somebody in the mass of writhing bodies over Monte’s shoulder draw back his fist and send it crashing into another guy’s teeth, and a quick look around confirms that he’s not the only one. In the back, somebody’s started tearing down the posters advertising upcoming shows, and the bouncers are ushering out a whole slew of people determinedly not freaking out.

Up on stage, Gerard finishes up with song with a cheerful-but-tense “Thanks, guys, that’s all for tonight,” even though Tommy knows they were planning on playing at least another three songs.

Frank’s pulling the strap of his guitar over his head as soon as the last riffs are done, though, and he catches Tommy’s eyes and tilts his head towards backstage with a pointed look.

“Yeah, okay,” Tommy says, turning to face Monte and Adam. “Let’s bail.”

  


Frank clamps his hands down on Tommy’s shoulder as soon as Monte pushes him into the backstage area. “You’re okay,” he says, and then “Man, dude, that was fucking sick, did you see that?”

“Like, the crazy people?” Tommy asks on a laugh.

“Revolutionaries,” Frank corrects him. “Nobody’s ever started a revolution from their study back home.”

“So these people are going to start a revolution killing each other?”

Frank shakes his head, like he can’t believe Tommy’s being this dense. “Maybe that’s what they’re doing now,” he says. “But not long now, and their anger will shift.”

Tommy wrinkles his nose. “Anger?” he asks. “I figured this was more drunk rowdiness.”

“Oh no, this is anger,” Frank says. He waves Tommy towards the door leading to the floor. “Go on, take a look.”

Tommy has to get up on his toes to peer through the window set in the door. It looks like reinforced glass, which is probably a good thing. There are at least three fistfights going on that he can see, and a whole number of scuffles that could be people getting their heads bashed in or people play-fighting or people dancing like spazzes, who knows. A couple have already spilled out onto the street, yelling and jeering, but it looks like everyone’s staying clear of the stage, which is, you know, good.

Hot breath ghosts over Tommy’s ear and he jumps a mile before he realizes it’s just Frank.

“On the brink,” he says. “I told you.”

“You did, yeah,” Tommy admits, quietly, hardly any space between them. His gaze flickers down to Frank’s lips, spit-slick and shiny, and Frank catches him looking and laughs, nudging his chin upwards to bump their noses together.

“I fucking told you,” he whispers.

Tommy feels Adam at his back a split-second before Frank’s focus slips away from him, up over his shoulder.

“Hey now,” Adam says mildly. He snakes his arm around Tommy’s waist. “Hands off the boyfriend, please.”

“Wasn’t using my hands,” Frank says, grinning, but he still takes a respectful step back. As respectful as he can be with the giant leer on his face, at least.

Adam rolls his eyes at him. He wraps his other arm around Tommy, too, slipping it just under his t-shirt and settling it, hot and huge, against Tommy’s stomach. Tommy leans his head back onto Adam’s shoulder, tilting it a little bit so he can peer up at Adam’s face, the line of his jaw. Everything feels light, eerie, unreal, like Tommy’s about to float away. He’s here, in New York City, 400 miles away from Clarkenwell. By now, everyone at school knows they’ve gotten out. Maybe even his mom.

Adam catches him looking and grins at him. “Gonna start a revolution with our very first gig,” he says. “Think that’s exciting enough for you?”

Tommy reaches up to slide his fingers into Adam’s hair, ignoring the gagging noises Frank apparently can’t resist. He grins. “It’s a start.”

  


“We need somebody to check that the van’s still okay,” Ray says in the chaos, bent over his guitar case, and Adam reaches for Tommy’s hand.

“We’ll do it,” he says. “See you guys in a sec.”

And it really is just a second, because they’re no ten feet down the hall before they’re intercepted by Monte. “Where do you think you’re you going?” he asks.

“Um.” Tommy gestures vaguely down the corridor, dropping Adam’s hand to do so. “Home?”

Monte shakes his head. “Forget it,” he says. “There are people rioting in the parking lot. You’re not getting out of here.”

Tommy thinks his eyes probably go a bit bug-eyed at that, and he casts a helpless look in Adam’s direction. Not that Adam looks any better, really.

“So what are we supposed to do?” Adam asks faintly.

“Go back to the dressing room and wait,” Monte says. He turns Tommy around by the shoulders and gives him a little push. “Go on, now. We’ll let you know when things are safe.”

  


As it turns out, things aren’t safe again for a long, _long_ time. They end up hanging out in their dressing room for several hours, sprawled out on the grimy couches, bored out of their minds but too lazy to do anything. Ray’s been noodling around on his guitar for what feels like forever, picking out snatches of songs that then get stuck in Tommy’s head.

He’s trying not to say anything, though, because Ray’s tolerance of him and Adam is tentative at the best of times. So he hunches up his shoulders and lets Adam hold his hand between their thighs, which is seriously more soothing than he wants to admit.

Frank and Gerard are draped over the couch across from them, next to Ray’s chair, Gerard reading a back issue of Time Magazine that he found between the cushions for approximately the fortieth time, and Frank alternately tapping his feet or crossing and uncrossing his legs or drumming his fingers on his knees. It’d probably be annoying if it weren’t the only form of entertainment.

Every once in a while Mikey, who’s off socializing with somebody he knows through somebody he knows from his time in Jersey, or Monte will stick their heads in the door and give a progress report, usually along the lines of ‘Nope, still people going crazy outside, it’s gonna be a while yet.’

It’s not until some insane hour in the morning, when Tommy’s eyes are starting to sting with tiredness, that Mikey comes in and says, “Somebody set a car on fire,”

“Re-vo-lu-tion,” Frank singsongs, but Tommy doesn’t look at him. He’s stuck staring at Adam who’s staring back, eyes just as wide as Tommy’s, probably. Just – they’re in this. They’re a part of this, now.

It’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.

Naturally, epiphanic moments like that mean nothing around Frank, the hyperactive rock star. “Fuck yeah,” he says, dancing around on his seat. “Fuck yeah, man, this is fucking amazing, is what it is.”

“Just, fucking-“ Gerard jabs him with his elbow. “Sit still, will you.”

“’Sit still?’” Frank echoes. “The fuck?”

“Yes, sit still,” Gerard says. “You’re not fucking rioting, you’re in here, and you need to stop freaking the Hell out because I’m trying to read.”

“Stop freaking out? Why would you do that to me?” Frank moans, head tilted over the back of the dingy couch. “Why are we stuck here?”

Gerard cranes his neck to peer at his face. “I don’t know if you noticed the rioters outside?”

“Exactly.” Franks smacks the bottom of his fist against Gerard’s thigh. “We should be out there, with them.” He blinks his eyes at them. “We’d be fucking awesome rioters. Right, guys?”

He gives Tommy a pleading look, and it’s not like Tommy would know but he kind of wants to be, but Ray gets there first.

“They’re kids, Frank,” he says. “And I know you’re a giant child, but they’re _actual_ children, and they shouldn’t be anywhere _near_ a riot.”

“You’re no fun,” Frank moans theatrically, but the air has already gone still and stifling around them.

“Fucking seriously?” Tommy asks.

“Tommy,” Gerard says, half placating and half confused but Tommy’s attention is all on Ray’s bowed head.

“Look man,” he says, “I know you’ve gotten it into your head somehow that I’m this snot-nosed little kid who’s only out to ruin your life, but you’re not the only one who has it tough, so if you could stop acting like I’m a fucking idiot, that’d be much appreciated.”

“Hookay,” Gerard says into the silence. “You know, I think I’m going to go check how things are looking out there.” He pulls on Frank’s sleeve. “You can come with me.”

Frank sputters a bit but goes, and Adam hovers a bit but he doesn’t try particularly hard to stay when Gerard takes his arm and pulls him out the door. Fucking traitor.

It’s quiet after they leave, and Tommy sits perched at the edge of his seat, all ready for Ray to open his mouth and start listing all the ways Tommy _is_ a little kid and a fucking idiot and completely inferior in every way.

Ray doesn’t, though. He just sits there, bowed over his guitar, plucking out the beginning of _Nothing Else Matters_.

Finally, Tommy can’t take the tension anymore. He was totally going to wait around until Ray finally gave in and admitted what a dick he is, or else gave Tommy Hell for his attitude, whatever, but in the end, it’s Tommy who caves.

He says, “Well, if you’re not gonna say anything,” as snottily as he can manage as he gets up, but it’s totally a retreat and he knows it. And honestly, the only thing he wants to do right now is get the fuck out of here as fast as possible. And he almost makes it, too, before a quiet “Tommy,” makes him hesitate at the door.

“I know it’s tough, up at that school,” Ray says. He looks up from his strings. “I know it’s fucking tough.”

Tommy’s hand slips from the doorknob. It’s not like he doesn’t know that; he does, he fucking _lives_ there. But everybody always acts like all the shit they get is fucked up but shouldn’t actually bother him, and he didn’t realize how much that hurt until someone acknowledged that it might.

Ray smiles a little bit. “I know, Tommy, okay? I get it. But at least up there, nobody’s gonna tie you to their bumper and cruise down the highway going ninety. They’re not gonna grab you off a dark street corner and force you to swallow handfuls of broken glass, and they’re not going to kick you in the face until not even your dental records are going to help identify you.” He gestures vaguely at the door but doesn’t say anything else, just offers another, weaker smile.

Tommy bites his lip for a moment, but then he turns to face Ray all the way. “I get that,” he says. “I do. And maybe I’m being stupid, and maybe I’m dragging Adam into something we’re both going to regret, but I’m not going to trade freedom for security. Ray. I can’t be that guy.”

“Yeah, I know.” Ray strums again, E to E flat. “You wouldn’t be our Tommy if you could.”

He smiles again, expression growing when Tommy fumbles for the doorknob. “I’m gonna – help the others pack up our shit,” he stammers.

“You do that,” Ray says serenely, and by the time Tommy’s in the hallways and pulling the door shut behind him, he’s already gone back to plucking on his strings.

  


They don’t get back on the bus until the sky turns a pale pink on the horizon, stars fading away above them.

“There’s no place like home,” Gerard says after he sinks into the passenger seat, sliding one leg across the center console to kick his heel against Mikey’s.

Mikey kicks back half-heartedly and turns the key in the ignition. “Don’t pass out yet,” he says. “You have to navigate.”

“M’not passing out,” Gerard says, half the words lost around a yawn.

Mikey rolls his eyes, but Tommy gets it. The adrenaline’s faded by now, leaving him shaky and drained, and he doesn’t resist when Adam tugs him over to rest against Adam’s shoulder.

“So that was our first gig,” Adam says quietly.

Tommy grins. “ _Your_ first gig,” he says.

“Yeah, _my_ first gig.” Tommy can’t see it, but Adam _sounds_ like he’s rolling his eyes. “Can’t tell you how glad I am that we’ve popped that particular cherry.”

Tommy snots, but there’s still a shiver of anticipation that runs through him, unexpected and pleasantly terrifying.

“Please don’t talk about your cherries,” Ray says from the back. “There are things I really don’t need to know about, God.”

Adam tightens his arm around Tommy protectively. And unnecessarily, because whatever his deal was with Ray, Tommy’s over it now.

“Would you rather hear about the coke that techie offered us backstage?” he asks, making Ray groan and everybody else laugh, and settles more comfortably against Adam’s side.

  


They get stuck in traffic just outside Springfield, which Frank proclaims to be evidence of his revolution at work and Tommy think is just fucking annoying, and they spend a solid three hours trying to decipher the bumper stickers on the car in front of them.

Mikey finally pulls them into a parking lot off the highway, refusing to drive any further until the road’s cleared up a bit, and as much as Gerard whines about wanting to go home already, there’s not a whole lot he can do about stopped traffic. Instead, Frank finds a Frisbee for them to throw around squashed underneath an amp, and they do that for twenty minutes before they all try to catch a bit of sleep in the van, and Tommy goes straight from listening to Adam’s heartbeat to Frank shaking him awake with the sun setting behind him awake with the sun setting behind him, muttering about oversleeping and no fucking alarm clocks.

Ray’s the one to take over the wheel this time, and everybody else falls back asleep pretty much the minute they get back on the road. Tommy’s awake now, though, and Adam nods off a couple of times but eventually pulls himself upright as well, and kisses Tommy’s jaw with a sleepy smile.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

Tommy can’t help but laugh at that, because seriously? But then he shrugs and says, “Stuff. You know, not anything in particular. Just stuff.”

Adam nods slowly. “You know everything’s going to be different now, right?” he says.

Tommy glances around but they’re the only ones awake, besides Ray, who’s staring at the road over the steering wheel and bobbing his head to some non-existent beat.

Adam finds Tommy’s hand between the seats and squeezes his fingers firmly. “We can’t hide anymore,” he says. His lips curl into a weak smile when Tommy gives him a look. “We’re out now. The school knows we snuck out, and our parents know, and even if they somehow don’t wring our necks, everybody’ll know something happened.”

Tommy fingers his hair. He doesn’t say anything, but he knows Adam’s right. They’re not getting out of this one no matter how far they bend.

He still thinks that it was worth it.

  


Nobody catches them sneaking in. Ray stops the van on the maintenance road closest to their dorm. Frank wraps his arm around Tommy’s neck from behind and gives it a quick squeeze, but there’s not huge, emotional scene. Gerard’s dead to the world in the back, and Mikey lifts a tired hand, but that’s all. Once Adam slides the door shut from the outside, it barely takes the guys half a minute to rattle the van down the road and out of sight, despite the neat and tidy 17-point-turn Ray has to execute on the tiny little road.

Tommy stares after them until the red lights have disappeared into the darkness, and even then he only moves when Adam brushes a hand along his back.

Adam helps him scale the fence with an ease that has Tommy stumped for a moment before he remember that Adam’s been climbing this fence pretty regularly for two months now, and he hasn’t needed help in a long time. Clearly, it’s not only boosting his confidence.

Tommy hangs onto Adam’s hand when they’re cutting across the grounds and Adam doesn’t seem to mind, smiling to himself in the darkness, dragging Tommy to a stop by the basement window and pushing him up against the bricks to kiss him. He kisses him once more, soft and sweet, when they get to Adam’s room. He reaches down to squeeze Tommy’s hand and smiles at him, but he doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to be said.

Tommy keeps looking over his shoulder on his way to the stairs and Adam’s looking back every time, and Tommy clings to that while he slips into his room and changes into his PJ’s, when he’s staring at the ceiling, keeping his eyes open for as long as he possibly can because the next time he wakes up, there’s going to be hell to pay.

  


For some reason, Tommy fully expects to be dragged out of bed by his hair, some teacher or supervisor or whatever screeching in his ear about calling his parents. He isn’t. Instead, he’s pulled from sleep by the incessant beeping of his alarm, which is as annoying as it is ordinary. He smacks it into submission and then lies there for a moment, covers pulled up to his chin, listening. There are people moving in the halls, talking quietly. Perhaps a little more quietly than usual on a Monday morning, but that might just be Tommy’s imagination. It’s running wild enough to, after all.

But there’s nothing for it. Tommy’s going to have to give in and get up eventually, so he pushes the covers down and sits up. He finds a crumpled pair of khakis under the bed that don’t look so bad once he shakes the wrinkles out, and once that’s done the rest just kind of happens, his body falling into the routine of getting himself up and dressed and ready for another day in Hell.

He makes his way over to the dining hall after a quick stop at the bathroom, feeling more and more like Alice with every step. There aren’t many people around, but everyone who sees him stares like he’s got horns growing out of his head. Word’s gotten out, apparently. The dining room, like some bullshit teen movie, falls silent when the door falls shut behind him. Adam isn’t around, but Ryan is, staring at him with his eyes wide and his lips curved into a soft, pink ‘o.’ Tommy gets an orange juice because he doesn’t think he can get anything more substantial down and sits at an empty table and hopes to God somebody will come get him before he starts laughing out of sheer desperation.

Of course, _that_ feeling only lasts until there’s a hand on his shoulder, and Mrs. Sallivan asking him to please accompany him to the principal’s office, and then all his whirling thoughts completely wipe away and the only thought he’s got left is a terrified mantra of _oh shit_ looping ‘round and ‘round in his head, like one of Frank’s scratched-up records.

Tommy doesn’t think there’s a single person who doesn’t watch them go.

  


Tommy, for all that he’s kind of a problem child at this school, has only been to the principal’s office once before, and that was when he first got here. His mom had hovered awkwardly at the very edge of their seat, quick to smile and even quicker to assure everyone who’d listen how thankful they were. Tommy, in true fifteen-year-old fashion, had slouched in his seat and barely raised his eyes and mumbled unintelligible answers when prompted, sure that everyone at Clarkenwell as well as God above hated him.  
The office hasn’t changed much, not really. There’s a different calendar on the wall, this year’s edition of the Clarkenwell fundraiser for kids in need. The subjects have changed, but the theme hasn’t: Smiling girls and boys in tidy uniforms, playing instruments and sports, walking the grounds, studying and being overly attentive in class.

Other than that, though, things are mostly the same: An intimidating oak desk, a book shelf full of books heavy enough to crush someone’s head, two visitor’s chairs on one side of the room and Mrs. Morrigan on the other, contemplating the grounds outside her window with a disapproving glare that Tommy can recognize even in profile.

Adam’s already there, tense-limbed in one of the chairs in front of the desk. He doesn’t smile when he sees Tommy, not exactly, but his shoulders unclench a little bit, and as it turns out, that’s all the encouragement Tommy needs to step over the threshold and sink into the seat next to him. At least they’re going down together.

He starts when Adam nudges him and points his chin at the newspaper lying on the desk. It’s a copy of the Times, headline reading _New York City riots escalate._ There’s a shot of a group of protestors underneath, mouths open, caught mid-scream, and Tommy swallows.

“On the brink,” he says quietly.

Mrs. Morrigan hears him, maybe, because she turns away from the window to fix him with a truly paralyzing glare. “Mr. Ratliff,” she says. Her tone could cut glass.

She likes playing up the stern angle, though, so that’s not really all that new. She always wears blazers and pencil skirts and her hair pulled back into a tight bun, and really, it’s no surprise Clarkenwell is such a hellhole considering who’s running it. She’s the kind of woman that makes Tommy gape a bit at the fact that anybody actually thought it would be a good idea to marry her. And it’s not like he’s a misogynist or anything, Tommy knows plenty of marriage-worthy women (his own mother included), but Mrs. Morrigan? She’s like, the ultimate boner-killer.

Tommy shudders a bit, secretly, on the inside. He doesn’t even try to smile. “Yes, ma’am,” he says.

She looks away, lips pursing in distaste. “Wait quietly, if you please,” she says. “You are an adult now, Mr. Ratliff, I’m sure that’s possible.”

Tommy kinds of wants to make some smart-ass comment just to piss her off, but that might be pushing his luck a little too far, so he just sits still and counts the seconds ticking by loudly on the clock behind him. He loses count a couple of times but he sits as still as he can, even after his ass starts aching a little bit. He doesn’t even turn around when there’s a knock behind him, not until Mrs. Morrigan nods at somebody and says, all regal and composed, “Officer.”

Then, Tommy whirls around so fast he can actually feel something crack in his back, and yeah, no lie, there’s actually a cop coming into the room. He’s an older guy, muscled but tall enough that he still looks skinny, and he’s got ‘dignity’ written all over him. There’s another one, too, still waiting by the door, a big blond mountain of a guy. He could probably crush Tommy’s skull with one hand, Jesus fuck.

“Are these the two boys you mentioned?” the first cop asks Mrs. Morrigan.

She nods. “Mr. Ratliff, Mr. Lambert,” she says, mentioning to each of them in turn. She forces her lips into a smile. “If you would be so kind as to cooperate with Officer Halvard.”

Tommy nods slowly, remembering that whole bit they always go on about on TV about not saying anything without a lawyer. He’s not so sure he’s going to make it out of here in one piece, anyway, so maybe waiting for a lawyer would be stupid.

“Cooperate on what?” Adam asks, voice a little rough.

Halvard smiles at him. “Nothing terrible, I promise,” he says.

“Terrible enough to involve the police,” Tommy points out, which makes Mrs. Morrigan sigh quietly and Halvard’s smile get even bigger. Tommy’s starting to think Halvard thinks he’s dealing with five-year-olds.

“There’s been an incident this weekend which was serious enough to warrant a police inquiry, yes,” he says. “Considering your whereabouts have been unaccounted for since Friday night, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you some questions.”

It’s by far the nicest _Where the hell have you been?_ that Tommy’s ever heard, and that relaxes him a bit. At least no one’s busting out the handcuffs quite yet.

“Okay,” he says. He looks over at Adam, and Adam nods. Tommy swallows. “Okay.”

The cop nods. “You’re not obliged to say anything without a lawyer,” he says. “We can call you one, if you’d like, but we’d have to bring you in to the station for that.”

This time it’s Adam who says, “That’s okay,” before he cuts a quick glance at Tommy. “We didn’t do anything super illegal, right?”

It’s probably not the smartest thing to say, but Tommy’s pretty unsettled himself. Do they really call in the cops when people play hookie for a day?

Mrs. Morrgian scoffs, so maybe they do, but the cop’s smile is vaguely sympathetic.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” he says. “This is just a questioning, there haven’t been any formal charges.”

“Yet,” Mrs. Morrigan adds under her breath.

Halvard gives her a displeased look. “Like I said,” he tells Adam and Tommy, “no formal charges, but if you could answer a few questions for me, that’d be much appreciated.”

“But,” Tommy says. “What’s going on? What are we even being questioned on?”

Halvard sighs. He says, “One of your classmates was attacked on school grounds this full moon. He sustained severe injuries and is currently in intensive care at Spring Harbor Hospital.”

“Who?” It comes out in a whisper. Tommy clears his throat, licks his lips. “Who was attacked?”

“A Mr. Jesse Monroe,” the cop says, and that sucks, but there’s totally a part of Tommy that’s relieved that it’s the school douchebag and not somebody he actually, you know, liked.

“Mr. Monroe was viciously attacked, by what was obviously a wolf,” Mrs. Morrigan elaborates. “So if you have anything to say for yourselves, now is the time to say it.”

“Now, now,” Halvard says. He smiles at them. “I’m sure that whatever these two boys got up to, they meant no harm. Isn’t that right, boys?”

“Right,” Tommy says faintly. He really wants to hold Adam’s hand, but there’s no way he’s giving these guys that much of an opening.

Halvard smiles again. “So, would you like to tell me where you were? As much as you can remember.”

Tommy exchanges a quick look with Adam. He dips his head. “We weren’t on the grounds,” he says.

“Where were you, then?” Halvard asks.

Tommy shakes his head. “Not on the grounds.”

“You’re in enough trouble as it is, Mr. Ratliff,” Mrs. Morrigan snaps. “I’d really advise against adding unwillingness to cooperate with the police to that list.”

“We went to a concert,” Tommy says, hoping his voice comes out cool and collected rather than wavering, because that’s the version that reveals the least, but it’s still true and he hopes they can see that. He really, really hopes so.

“And I’m sure there’s somebody who could verify that?” Halvard prompts, and Tommy bites his lip.

There is, of course there is, but Tommy’s not exactly keen on letting the cops know about the guys’ involvement in their illegal weekend activities.

“Mr. Ratliff,” Mrs. Morrigan says sharply.

“I can,” Adam says, but falls silent again when Mrs. Morrigan give him a quelling look.

“Obviously, questioning the two of you together isn’t doing anybody any good,” she says. “Mr. Ratliff, would you wait in the reception area?” She stabs the intercom on the desk with a manicured fingernail. “Marcy, draw the shades, please?”

There’s a staticky “yes, right away” in reply that Tommy barely hears. He’s too busy staring at Adam, and Adam’s looking back with his eyes just as wide because, new-found confidence aside, Adam’s more likely to cave out of the two of them and they both know it.

Mrs. Morrigan makes a pleased noise, no doubt popping a giant lady-boner at the prospect of getting to torture Adam, but things never get that far.

“Leave them alone,” somebody yells, audible even through the pane of glass that separates the office from the rest of the admin area, and they all turn to look.

It’s Daisy, most of her uniform on but it’s a mess and her ponytail is falling apart, half of it in her face. She’s kicking her legs and screaming and her fingernails leave long, bloody streaks down the arm of the blond officer who grabs her around the middle to stop her from coming closer. The guy winces but doesn’t let go.

“You can’t arrest them,” she yells, scrabbling at the arm around her waist, “because they didn’t fucking do it!”

Halvard gives Mrs. Morrigan an unreadable look. He gets up and opens the door and says, “Please elaborate, Miss,” like he’s at etiquette school and not in an office interrogating a bunch of school kids in an assault/attempted-murder investigation.

Daisy grows a bit calmer at that, but the cop who’s got her around the middle doesn’t let go. Smart guy.

“They didn’t do it,” Daisy says. She sets her jaw. “They weren’t even here.”

“Where were you?” Mrs. Morrigan asks them icily, and Adam manages to say, “New York” before the cop holds up a finger, asking them to be silent.

“Do you know who did?”

Daisy’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Yes,” she says evenly.

“Did _you_ assault Mr. Monroe?” the cop asks gently, like he’s talking to a child.

Daisy lifts her chin. “And I’m not sorry for it, either,” she says. “He had it coming.”

Mrs. Morrigan chokes on air. “You little brat,” she starts, and then seems to run out of words. The look of disgust, the way she curls her lip, though, they really say it all.

“Mrs. Morrigan,” Halvard reprimands gently, which could possibly have made Tommy’s day under different circumstances, and when he turns to Daisy, his eyes are still gentle. “Daisy, can you tell me _why_ you assaulted Mr. Monroe?”

Daisy grins at him, all teeth. “Because he makes my life hell. He makes their life hell,” she spits, one spindly finger pointed at Adam and Tommy, and the cop raises an eyebrow.

Mrs. Morrigan gapes at them. Tommy doesn’t think he’s ever seen her speechless.

“Boys?” the officer asks, and Tommy finds himself nodding before he remembers that maybe he shouldn’t be incriminating Daisy like that.

Halvard looks like a nice guy, though, and the tilt to his mouth is soft. “Is she right?”

“Jesse’s a jerk,” Tommy says.

“Has he ever been violent to you?” the cop asks.

Tommy looks at Adam who looks back, long and silent, and the cop sucks in a breath, obviously getting it without needing to be told, but then Adam nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “We got beat up a couple of times.”

“We had to see the vice principal for a fight, like, back in September,” Tommy adds. “He said we started it.”

“Did you?” the cop asks. He doesn’t sound like he’s judging though – just curious.

“Not unprovoked,” Tommy settles on eventually, and the cop nods like he gets it. Maybe he does. Either way, his voice his gentle when he turns to Daisy again.

“Daisy,” he says, quiet and calm, “we’re going to have to take you down to the station. Alright? I promise you won’t be hurt.”

“Fucking try me,” Daisy says, voice shaking, eyes wide, and when the officer holding her reaches for the handcuffs on his belt, Halvard shakes his head.

“Let’s not make a spectacle out of it, Bryar,” he says, and the officer nods before he leads Daisy away.

“Alright, then,” Halvard says. He smiles at them. “That means you two are most likely not the ones who did it,” he says, and that’s almost worse, the way he treats them, all kind and gentle, like they’re fucking idiots. At least when somebody’s a dick to them, then that’s just wrong. It’s harder to explain to people that kindness can be fucking painful too.

“Due to legal reasons, I have to ask you not to leave town regardless,” Halvard says. “We’re still going to need your statements, officially, and we might have to rely on you as witnesses.”

He hands each of them a card. It’s waxed paper, and it sticks to Tommy’s sweaty palm.

“Call me if there’s anything,” he says, tips his head at Mrs. Morrigan, and heads out after his colleague, closing the door with a cheerful little wave.

Mrs. Morrigan makes a small noise of displeasure. She doesn’t say anything, though, and the silence drags on until Adam starts to fidget, school slacks dragging against the fabric of the chair.

Tommy clears his throat. “So, like, are we getting suspended, or what?”

Mrs. Morrigan raises her eyebrows. “You can’t honestly think you’re still welcome at this school,” she says.

Tommy can feel his eyes going wide. Because yeah, getting expelled was always sort of the ultimate Damocles sword hanging over them, and okay, yeah, they’ve been sneaking out a bunch, but nobody gets expelled for _not_ being guilty of something, what the fuck.

“You’re kicking us out,” he says anyway, just to be sure.

Mrs. Morrigan attempts a pinched smile for a moment, but it’s not working too well and she lets it drop after only a moment. “You two gentlemen are obviously not very appreciative of the opportunity Clarkenwell is affording you,” she says. “There are hundreds of eligible students who would relish being offered what this school is offering you, and from your behavior, I have to conclude that they, unlike you, would actually deserve it.”

Tommy thinks his smile might be kind of mean. “You mean you’d rather have two lapdogs who roll over and beg when you tease them with a treat.”

Mrs. Morrigan’s expression is sour enough to curdle milk, which is kind of thrilling, no lie, even with the situation as fucked up as it is. “You have an hour to pack up your things and vacate the premises,” she says. “Then I’m asking Officer Halvard to return.”

“Can we call our parents, at least?” Adam asks. His face is calm, but his fingers are white around the armrests of his chair, and his voice shakes just the slightest bit.

Mrs. Morrigan’s face doesn’t even twitch. “You’re welcome to do whatever you like, Mr. Lambert, as long as you do it outside the school grounds. You are no longer Clarkenwell’s responsibility.”

“Motherfucker,” Tommy hears himself mutter. Wow. Just, wow. They can’t even bring cell phones to school with them – he has a grand total of eleven bucks in cash, how the hell do they expect them to get home?

“Language, Mr. Ratliff,” Mrs. Morrigan warns.

“He can say whatever he wants,” Adam says loudly. “He’s no longer Clarkenwell’s responsibility.” He hesitates before he opens his mouth again. “You fucking bitch.” He looks kind of terrified as soon as the words leave his mouth, like he can’t believe he actually said them.

Tommy definitely can’t, but that just makes him want to jump Adam all the more. And hey, he’s out, he’s free, so he gets up and slings his leg over Adam’s and kisses him, tongue and all, and grinds his hips into Adam’s stomach to show how much he approves.

“I can still have you arrested for trespassing,” Mrs. Morrigan cuts in sharply – a bit too sharply, like she’s losing her cool – and yeah. They definitely don’t have the money for bail.

Tommy withdraws reluctantly, leaving Adam glassy-eyed and shiny-lipped. “Let’s get out of this shithole,” he whispers.

“Yeah, okay,” Adam replies, just as soft, and eases Tommy off of him with a gentle hand to his side. “It’s not there’s anything left for us here.”

The words sting, even though they’re true, but Adam slides his fingers between Tommy’s when they turn to the door, and that helps.

“Please remember that your identification bracelets are school property,” Mrs. Morrigan says, just as they leave.

Flipping someone off has never felt so good.

  


It doesn’t take him long to pack. The uniforms had been included in the scholarship, and it’s not like Tommy’s going to need them. Same for the books, all those stupid fucking worthless books, and Tommy somehow resists the urge to shred them all to pieces. They don’t matter anymore. He’s out of here.

He finds his duffel and his backpack under the bed, but there’s not really anything for him to take. There’s three pairs of jeans and a couple of band shirts, half of them Gerard’s, a hoodie, a jacket. Computer print-outs of guitar tabs, a battered copy of _The Contender_ , the hanging picture thing his mom made him, but his bag is nowhere even close to full.

He turns, expecting to see an entire suitcase stuffed with shit still lurking in a corner somewhere, because this can’t be his life, can it? This can’t be everything he has to show for two-and-a-half years of misery. He throws open his closet door, starts pulling his starched white shirts and the neatly folded pants from the shelves, pushes the covers from the bed to find a pair of boxers in a miserable little heap.

His shower stuff is in the bathroom and he goes to get it even though there’s nothing of _him_ in there, only anonymous pieces of plastic. He leaves the door open when he gets back and dumps the entire thing on top of his clothes even though there’s water hiding in the shampoo cap that leaks all over his hand. He wipes his fingers on the bedspread and curses a bit, not because he really needs to but because he feels like he has to say something, anything, or he might explode.

A soft cough makes him look up.

There’s a mop of hair hovering at the doorway, bangs just long enough to warrant nasty looks from the administration, and Tommy actually has to stop and think about that for the first time. Huh. Maybe they’re all rebelling in their own little ways.

Still, though. Tommy and Adam are rebelling in fucking huge ways right now, and Tommy still hasn’t quite managed to wrap his head around that. He’s not sure he can deal with this right now.

“Hey, Ryan,” he says. “I’m a bit busy.”

Ryan lets his gaze sweep over the mess on the floor. He doesn’t come in, but he doesn’t leave again, either. “Is it true you’re getting kicked out?” he asks in a hushed voice.

When Tommy doesn’t say anything, he folds his arms over his chest, drops his gaze to his feet. He looks so small standing there, so alone, and Tommy feels bad for him all of a sudden. He doesn’t know much about him, but Ryan’s stuck here, too. None of them would be here if they had anywhere else to go.

“Yeah, I – me and Adam, yeah.” He tries to give Ryan a tiny smile. “Daisy’s gone, too.”

“Okay,” Ryan says. And God, the kid is going to have to live here after everything’s gone to shit, he’s gonna be one of the ones who deal with the aftermath of all Tommy’s and Adam’s and Daisy’s fuck-ups. He’s going to have to live with it all, and he’s all big, dark eyes and lips the slightest bit parted, pathetically young, and Tommy kind of feels like the worst person on the planet.

“Hey Ryan,” he says, motioning him closer. “If you ever need help. Like, really need it.” He leaned in close, pitching his voice to nothing more than a murmur. “You know where Desecration Row is?”

Ryan nods.

“Go there, ask for Frank. He’s crazy, but tell him Tommy sent you. He’ll help you out.”

“Frank,” Ryan repeats quietly.

“Frank,” Tommy says. He zips up his bag and slips it over his shoulder, and then he slides his hand around Ryan’s neck to draw him in and presses a kiss to his temple. “You’ve already got everything they’ll ever want,” he says, whispers, and then he leaves him standing there and walks out the door without ever looking back.

  


Adam’s waiting for him in the entrance hall, watched by Larkner’s eagle eyes. He’s got a bag, stuffed full from the looks of things, and a small cardboard box that Tommy takes from him, and they look gazes for a moment, wide and scared but also kind of excited, and Larkner says, “I think it’s time you left,” clearly no ‘think’ involved at all.

Tommy nods and starts for the door, the big double-winged wooden entrance that scared the crap out of him when he first got here and still makes him kind of uneasy, but Larkner’s hand on his elbow stops him.

Larkner narrows his eyes when Tommy turns his head to look, thoughtful and kind of mean. “There are places you’ll be welcome,” he says. “This is not one of them.”

“We get it, jeez,” Adam mutters, but Tommy is distracted by the feel of paper slipping into his palm, and he’s sure his confusion shows on his face when he looks up at Larkner.

Larkner tilts his head at the door. “Go on, then,” he says, all dark challenge. “Get out of here.”

“We’re going,” Adam huffs, and he doesn’t look back when he strides over to the door and strains to pull one wing open, not the way Tommy does. Larkner’s still standing there, alone in that big entrance hall, and he smirks a little bit and touches one fingertip to his temple in salute when he catches Tommy looking.

“Tommy, come on,” Adam says. There’s a hand on his elbow again, a surprisingly strong hand that pulls Tommy out of the dim gloom of the entrance hall and into the overcast daylight instead.

Tommy hitches a breath when the doors shutter closed behind them, dark and final. The path to the front gates looks endless from here, winding on and on and on, and Tommy can’t even get his feet to unstick his feet from the ground, he’s never going to make it all the way out there.

“Hey.” Clammy fingers slide underneath his, and when he blinks and tears his eyes away, Adam’s smiling at him. “We’re still here,” he says, squeezing Tommy’s hand in his own. “Okay.” Then he hesitates, because he has to feel the paper Larkner slipped him tucked between Tommy’s sweat-sticky palm and the side of the box. “What-?”

“Larkner,” Tommy says. He shifts Adam’s box to his hip and keeps hold of it with his elbow, using both hands to uncrumple the note.

It’s an address, written in the same sloping scrawl Larkner uses to grade quizzes. Just a single line, a street in the run-down part of town, down by the club the guys play at. Where the sympathetics live.

“What is it?” Adam asks, craning his neck.

Tommy shows him, and Adam bites his lip.

“You think?” he asks.

Tommy shakes his head, helplessly, not ‘no.’ “I think he’s okay,” he says.

Adam nods. “Worth a shot,” he says. He tilts his head down the driveway, towards the staircase leading down to the footpath that’ll take them towards town, away from this hellhole, but Tommy only makes it a couple of steps before he hesitates.

There’s a cop car parked to the side, empty, sirens off. It’s not particularly threatening, but it still sends a shudder down Tommy’s spine. “You think she’s gonna be okay?” he asks.

“She’s still a kid,” Adam says, but he doesn’t sound sure. “Like, there’s limits to what they can do to her, right?”

“Shit,” Tommy says. “Just, why the fuck did she do that? It’s not like we don’t get enough bad press as it is.”

“You know why,” Adam says pointedly, and yeah, Tommy does. If he hadn’t found Adam and Frank and the guys, maybe that would have been Tommy. Doesn’t mean he has to like it.

“It’s going to be a mess,” Tommy says. “The seperationists are going to be all over it. They’re gonna lock us up for good this time.”

“Only if we let them,” Adam says firmly, and Tommy looks up at him, surprised. Adam smiles a bit, nudging his shoulder, and draws himself up to his full height. It’s easy to forget, most of the time, but Adam really is one impressive motherfucker.

“Frank’s revolution,” Tommy says slowly. “You think it’s gonna happen?”

“I think anything can happen.” Adam holds out his hand. “Anything can happen, now.”

Tommy nods slowly. “I hope you’re right,” he says. He slides his fingers between Adam’s. “Like, I really, _really_ hope you’re right. Because I don’t know what we’re gonna do if you’re not.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Adam tells him, and quirks his lips into a smile.

Tommy smiles back, warm and trusting even though he should be freaking out. He should be terrified, and instead, he pulls a little on Adam’s hand and takes the first, hopeful step down the stairs.


End file.
